Sleep contributes to the maintenance of overall health and well-being. There are a growing number of patients who have headache disorders that are significantly affected by poor sleep. This is a paradoxical relationship, whereby sleep deprivation or excess sleep leads to a worsening of headaches, yet sleep onset also alleviates ongoing headache pain. Currently, the mechanism of action remains controversial and poorly understood. The glymphatic system is a newly discovered perivascular network that encompasses the whole brain and is responsible for removing toxic proteins and waste metabolites from the brain as well as replenishing nutrition and energy. Recent studies have suggested that glymphatic dysfunction is a common underlying etiology of sleep disorders and headache pain. This study reviews the current literature on the relationship between the glymphatic system, sleep, and headaches, discusses their roles, and proposes acupuncture as a non-invasive way to focus on the glymphatic function to improve sleep quality and alleviate headache pain.
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| http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fneur.2022.885020 | DOI Listing |
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In vivo imaging markers of glymphatic dysfunction in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: Analysis of ALPS index and choroid plexus volume.
J Neurol Sci
January 2025
Department of Neurology, University of Ulsan College of Medicine, Asan Medical Center, Seoul, Republic of Korea. Electronic address:
Background: The glymphatic system, essential for brain waste clearance, has been implicated in neurodegenerative diseases, including amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Emerging imaging markers, such as the analysis along the perivascular space (ALPS) index and choroid plexus volume (CPV), may provide insights into glymphatic function, but their relevance to ALS remains unclear.
Objective: To assess glymphatic dysfunction in ALS patients using the ALPS index and CPV.
Anything but small: Microarousals stand at the crossroad between noradrenaline signaling and key sleep functions.
Neuron
January 2025
Division of Glial Disease and Therapeutics, Center for Translational Neuromedicine, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark; Center for Translational Neuromedicine, University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, NY, USA. Electronic address:
Continuous sleep restores the brain and body, whereas fragmented sleep harms cognition and health. Microarousals (MAs), brief (3- to 15-s-long) wake intrusions into sleep, are clinical markers for various sleep disorders. Recent rodent studies show that MAs during healthy non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep are driven by infraslow fluctuations of noradrenaline (NA) in coordination with electrophysiological rhythms, vasomotor activity, cerebral blood volume, and glymphatic flow.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGenome-wide association study unravels mechanisms of brain glymphatic activity.
Nat Commun
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Department of Neurology and National Center for Neurological Disorders, Huashan Hospital, State Key Laboratory of Medical Neurobiology and MOE Frontiers Center for Brain Science, Shanghai Medical College, Fudan University, Shanghai, China.
Brain glymphatic activity, as indicated by diffusion-tensor imaging analysis along the perivascular space (ALPS) index, is involved in developmental neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative diseases, but its genetic architecture is poorly understood. Here, we identified 17 unique genome-wide significant loci and 161 candidate genes linked to the ALPS-indexes in a discovery sample of 31,021 individuals from the UK Biobank. Seven loci were replicated in two independent datasets.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGlymphatic system in Pantothenase kinase associated neurodegeneration (PKAN).
Parkinsonism Relat Disord
December 2024
Department of Neurology, CEDIMAT, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Electronic address:
Purpose: To investigate if accumulation of iron in the globus pallidus as seen in patients suffering from Pantothenase Kinase Associated Neurodegeneration (PKAN), is related to damage of the cerebral glymphatic system.
Material And Methods: In a group of 24 patients and an age-matched control group, functionality of the glymphatic system was assessed by the index of Analysis aLong the Perivascular Space (ALPS) from Diffusion Tensor Imaging data and correlated to the values of the T2∗ Times of the globus pallidus and the cerebral white matter measured by a Fast Field Echo sequence.
Results: In spite of the important reduction of the T2∗ Time of the globus pallidus, ALPS values of patients and controls were very similar and did not correlate to T2∗Time values in either group.
Glymphatic system impairment in normal tension glaucoma evaluated by diffusion tensor image analysis along the perivascular space.
Brain Res
January 2025
Department of Radiology, Beijing Tongren Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China. Electronic address:
Disruption of the glymphatic system plays a vital role in pathogenesis of neurodegeneration in normal tension glaucoma (NTG). We evaluated the impairment of glymphatic system of NTG patients by diffusion tensor image analysis along the perivascular space (DTI-ALPS), and explored the correlation between the ALPS index and dysfunction of visual cortices in resting state. DTI-ALPS was applied to 37 normal controls (NCs) and 37 NTG patients.
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