Relationship among Cognition, Sleep Patterns, Salivary Melatonin Level and Sleep Disorder Inventory of Older Adults in Nursing Homes

ABSTRACT

Purpose@#The purpose of this study was to investigate sleep quality in older adults in nursing home with objective data collection. @*Methods@#Participants included 74 older adults in nursing homes in Korea aged 65 years or above. Data were collected using a wearable device (Fitbit), salivary melatonin level and Sleep Disorder Inventory (SDI). The Pearson correlation coefficient was calculated to examine whether there was any correlation between sleep-related variables such as Total Sleep Time (TST), Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, shallow sleep, deep sleep, salivary melatonin level and SDI. @*Results@#There were distortion of sleep structure, as TST comprised short REM sleep (15.93 ± 5.47%), long shallow sleep (74.18 ± 8.08%) and short deep sleep (9.89 ± 5.03%). Also, salivary melatonin levels were low (15.06 ± 7.77 pg/mL). Moreover, we found than melatonin was significantly associated with TST (r = .251, p = .044), REM sleep (r = .294, p = .020) and deep sleep (r = .391, p = .002). But there was no correlation between SDI and other sleeprelated variables. @*Conclusion@#These findings highlight that insufficient sleep structure is associated with the salivary melatonin level among older adults in nursing home. We suggest developing programs to promote sleep quality of older adults in nursing homes.