New Study Links TBI And Chronic Sleep Problems In Veterans
April 04, 2021
According to a study published in Neurology, veterans with a traumatic brain injury are significantly more likely to experience long-term sleep problems.
The longitudinal cohort study involved nearly 200,000 veterans who were receiving care through VA health care. One group of 98,709 veterans who had suffered a TBI between October 2001 and September 2015 were individually matched with another veteran without a TBI of the same age. Researchers followed each pair for an average of five years but as many as 14.
Half of the TBIs studied were mild. At the start of the study, the average age of study participants was 49, and 11.9 percent were women. Researchers excluded anyone with existing sleep problems from the study group.
The findings showed that the veterans with a TBI were 50 percent more likely (23.4 percent vs. 15.8 percent) to develop a sleep problem than their non-TBI counterparts. Sleep problems observed included sleep apnea, insomnia, hypersomnia and sleep-related movement disorders.
The association between TBI and sleep disorders was strongest in those with mild TBIs. It also was not affected much by the presence of PTSD in the participant.
The study also showed that patients with TBIs were much more likely than those without TBI to have psychiatric conditions, such as mood disorders (22.4 percent vs. 9.3 percent), anxiety (10.5 percent vs. 4.4 percent), PTSD (19.5 percent vs. 4.4 percent), substance abuse (11.4 percent vs. 5.2 percent) and smoking or tobacco use (13.5 percent vs. 8.7 percent).
Sleep disorders affect the quality of life for sufferers and make it harder to recover from a TBI or any other condition. This makes it important to recognize the warning signs of sleep disorders and to understand how to treat and even prevent them in veterans.