Nocturnal Hypoxia in ALS Is Related to Cognitive Dysfunction and Can Occur as Clusters of Desaturations

Park Su-Yeon
Kim Sung-Min
Sung Jung-Joon
Lee Kyung-Min
Park Kyung-Seok
Kim Sang-Yun
Nam Hyun-woo
Lee Kwang-Woo

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Publication date

September 2013

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0075324

Publisher

Public Library of Science

Abstract

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a neurodegenerative disease that leads to progressive weakness of the respiratory and limb muscles. Consequently, most patients with ALS exhibit progressive hypoventilation, which worsens during sleep. The aim of this study was to evaluate the relationship between nocturnal hypoxia and cognitive dysfunction and to assess the pattern of nocturnal hypoxia in patients with ALS.<95% for ≥10% of the night) and their clinical characteristics and cognitive function were compared.Compared to patients without nocturnal hypoxia, those with nocturnal hypoxia (n = 10, 40%) had poor memory retention (p = 0.039) and retrieval efficiency (p = 0.045). A cluster-of-desaturation pattern was identified in 7 patients (70%...