Authors :
Presenting Author: Franz Furbass, PhD – Beacon Biosignals
Sophia Cacciatore, BA – Longboard Pharmaceuticals
Ngoc Minh Le, MD – Longboard Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
Michelle Fogerson, PhD – Beacon Biosignals
Matthew Alkaitis, MD, PhD – UCB
Jay Pathmanathan, MD, PhD – Beacon Biosignals
Rationale:
Healthcare related quality of life questionnaires and sleep surveys have demonstrated clear negative impacts on anxiety, stress, and sleep in caregivers of children with severe epilepsy (including Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome, LGS) (1–2). However, to date there has been no detailed evaluation of caregiver sleep macro and microarchitecture. Here we report preliminary results of the Dreem LGS Caregiver Study to further characterize subjective reports of disturbed and interrupted sleep in caregivers of children with severe epilepsy.
Methods:
This study is an ongoing observational cohort study of sleep in caregivers of a person with LGS (any individual providing 24-hour care to an individual with an LGS diagnosis and either >2 seizures per week or severe cognitive impairment requiring constant care), as compared to parents providing 24-hour care to one or more neurotypical children under 18 years of age. Caregivers were asked to wear the Dreem EEG Headband (which is an FDA-cleared device approved for monitoring sleep in adults) for two periods of 5 consecutive nights (with 2 nights off in between). Here we report preliminary details of sleep micro-architecture in LGS caregivers vs control caregivers.
Results:
A total of 293 nights were collected with the Dreem 3S system from 33 participants. 270 recordings passed quality checks (174 of 184 nights from LGS caregivers, and 96 of 109 from control caregivers). All participants had at least 3 nights with good signal quality and a minimum of 294 minutes recording duration (LGS caregivers 8.4 and control caregivers 8.0 recordings average, respectively). Mean total sleep time (TST) was similar in both groups (388.6 minutes for LGS caregivers vs 386.7 minutes for control caregivers, nominal Welch’s t-test p=0.90). Wake after sleep onset (WASO) was substantially increased in LGS caregivers (mean 38.1 minutes in LGS caregivers and 24.1 minutes in control caregivers, nominal Welch’s t-test p< 0.05).