
Watch A/Prof Matthew Pase accept the research grant award and hear a bit about the project.
Project Summary:
Good sleep is essential for a healthy brain. One key function of sleep is to flush out brain waste that accumulates during the day. This includes proteins associated with Alzheimer’s disease, the commonest form of dementia.
Brain waste clearance depends on Aquaporin-4 (AQP4) water channels, which facilitate fluid flow in and out of the brain. We hypothesise that poor sleep will be particularly bad for the brain in people with reduced AQP4 water channel expression; poor sleep limits the time available for brain waste clearance, and reduced water channel expression means there is less plumbing available for that clearance to occur.
To test our hypothesis, this study aims to investigate whether people with different variants of the AQP4 gene are more susceptible to early Alzheimer’s disease in the face of poor sleep. We will perform genetic sequencing to measure AQP4, overnight polysomnography to assess sleep, and blood and cerebrospinal fluid assays to measure Alzheimer’s disease biomarkers. Participants will be living independently in the community and without significant neurological conditions.
This study will help to understand the causes of early Alzheimer’s disease. It will also help in identifying high-risk individuals who would benefit most from sleep interventions to reduce dementia risk. In the future, this could ultimately allow clinicians to personalise dementia risk reduction strategies based on genes.