A Community-based Study of Risk Factors for Probable Rapid Eye Movement Sleep Behavior Disorder

Objectives: To cross-sectionally explore the potential risk factors for rapid eye movement (REM) sleep behavior disorder (RBD) in a community cohort in Shanghai.

Methods: Based on the validated RBD screening questionnaire (RBDSQ), we identified individuals with probable RBD (pRBD) in 3635 community-dwelling residents (≥50 years old) from an urban community of Shanghai. Potential risk factors of pRBD, including age, sex, smoking, socioeconomic status, obesity, consumption of tea (surrogate for caffeine intake) and alcohol, medications and chronic disease status, were assessed via questionnaire. We used logistic regression to investigate the associations between these studied factors and pRBD after adjusting for age, sex and other studied factors.

Results: Based on the RBDSQ score ≥5, 2.70% (3.28% in men and 2.41% in women) participants were considered as pRBD. We found that lower education, presence of head injury, atrial fibrillation, hyperlipidemia, constipation, olfactory disturbance, and imbalance, use of alcoholic beverage, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, and benzodiazepine were associated with higher likelihood of having pRBD (P < 0.05 for all). In contrast, male sex, use of coffee or tea, smoking and other factors were not significantly association with altered risk of having pRBD. We did not find significant interaction between sex, age and these factors, in relation to pRBD risk.

Conclusions: In this community-based study of older adults, we identified several potential risk factors for concurrent pRBD, including environmental factors and vascular risk factors.