Sleep deprivation and hormone therapy in postmenopausal women.
OBJECTIVE
Sleep complaints increase after menopause, but literature on the effect of postmenopausal hormone therapy (HT) on sleep is controversial. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of ageing and HT on sleep quality, assessed using polysomnography, and on the accuracy of the subjective estimation of sleep quality in women before and after sleep deprivation.


METHODS
Twenty postmenopausal women (aged 58-72 years) were recruited: 10 HT-users and 10 non-HT-users. Eleven young women (aged 20-26 years) served as controls. Polysomnography and subjective sleep quality were measured on four consecutive nights: adaptation, baseline, 40-h sleep deprivation and recovery.


RESULTS
Although the postmenopausal women slept worse than the controls at baseline, and in particular during the recovery night, their recovery response to sleep deprivation was well preserved. At baseline, HT-users had a shorter latency to rapid eye movement (REM) (P=0.043), with fewer awakenings from slow wave sleep (SWS) (P=0.029) but more from REM (P=0.033) than non-HT-users. During recovery, the HT-users had more stage 2 sleep (P=0.048) and less slow wave activity (SWA) in the first non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep episode (P=0.021) than the non-HT-users. The poor correlation between subjective and objective sleep quality at baseline became significant during recovery.


CONCLUSIONS
Although sleep in postmenopausal women was worse than in young controls, the recovery response following sleep deprivation was relatively well preserved. HT offered no significant advantage to sleep at baseline and slightly weakened the recovery response to prolonged wakefulness.
Kalleinen
Nea
N
Sleep Research Unit, Department of Physiology, University of Turku, Dentalia, Lemminkäisenkatu 2, Turku, Finland. nea.kalleinen@utu.fi
Polo
Olli
O
Himanen
Sari-Leena
SL
Joutsen
Atte
A
Urrila
Anna S
AS
Polo-Kantola
Päivi
P
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology; D004958:Estradiol / Q000627:therapeutic use; D015914:Estrogen Replacement Therapy; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D009640:Norethindrone / Q000627:therapeutic use; D017286:Polysomnography; D017698:Postmenopause / Q000502:physiology*; D012890:Sleep / Q000187:drug effects; D012892:Sleep Deprivation / Q000503:physiopathology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires
D004958:Estradiol; D009640:Norethindrone