Sleep disturbances in PD show a selective pattern of progression over 5 years, with daytime sleepiness, napping, RLS symptoms, sleep talking, nightmares and RBDSQ score increasing while insomnia symptoms remain stable.
Excessive daytime sleepiness increased significantly over 5 years in Parkinson's disease patients.
REM sleep behavior disorder-related symptoms increased significantly over the 5-year follow-up period.
Restless legs syndrome prevalence increased significantly over the 5-year follow-up.
Insomnia symptoms, circadian timing, and total sleep time remained stable over the 5-year follow-up period.
Excessive daytime sleepiness was independently associated with depressive symptoms, use of dopamine agonists, and risk of sleep apnea in multivariate logistic regression.
This research suggests that sleep problems in Parkinson's disease (PD) do not all worsen at the same rate — some get significantly worse over time while others stay relatively stable. In a 5-year study following 183 people with PD in Finland, researchers found that daytime sleepiness, daytime napping, restless legs syndrome, sleep talking, nightmares, and symptoms associated with REM sleep behavior disorder (a condition where people physically act out their dreams) all worsened measurably. However, problems with falling or staying asleep at night (insomnia), sleep timing, and total sleep duration did not change significantly during the same period. One particularly notable finding is the increase in REM sleep behavior disorder-related symptoms, including sleep talking and nightmares. This research suggests these symptoms may serve as useful markers for tracking how far PD has progressed, since they worsened in parallel with other disease features. The study also found that daytime sleepiness was linked to three specific factors: depression, taking dopamine agonist medications (a common PD treatment), and risk of sleep apnea, suggesting these factors should be considered when managing daytime sleepiness in PD patients. This matters because sleep disturbances are among the most common and disabling non-motor symptoms of Parkinson's disease, yet long-term data on how they evolve had been lacking. This research suggests that doctors caring for PD patients should routinely and repeatedly assess multiple aspects of sleep over time, rather than focusing only on a single sleep problem, as different sleep disorders follow different trajectories as the disease progresses.
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Upload Your LabsPartinen E, Ylikoski A, Hublin C, Partinen M. (2026). Changes in sleep characteristics in Parkinson's disease: a prospective 5-year follow-up study.. Journal of clinical sleep medicine : JCSM : official publication of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44470-026-00169-6