The Relationship between Sleep Disordered Breathing and Cognitive Decline, Neuro and Retinal Imaging

This thesis investigated whether sleep disordered breathing increases dementia risk in older people. It demonstrated that undiagnosed sleep disordered breathing is common in older age and is often asymptomatic. Sleep disordered breathing was found to associate with a slight decline in cognitive function, but not with imaging measures of vascular dementia - a common cause of dementia. Furthermore, low-dose aspirin was not found to be effective in preventing cognitive decline due to sleep disordered breathing. This thesis adds evidence that sleep disordered breathing is a dementia risk factor that may be significant at the population level.