Sleeping Disorders in Early Chronic Kidney Disease

Studies in patients on maintenance hemodialysis have disclosed a high prevalence of sleeping disorders, which have been linked to various factors including blood urea levels, creatinine levels, parathyroid hormone levels, anemia, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, quality of life, disease intrusiveness, and comorbidities. In contrast, few studies have been performed in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD), who represent the target of the present study. A group of 52 CKD patients were enrolled after characterization of their renal function. Comorbidities were evaluated by means of the Charlson Comorbidity Index. Sleep disorders were evaluated by means of the Sleep Disorder Questionnaire (SDQ), a 26-item questionnaire providing a hierarchic classification for relevant insomnia, relevant hypersomnia, subclinical disorders, or absence of sleep complaints. Results indicate that, in the early stages of CKD, at a time the comorbidity index is low, sleep disorders are present in 80.7% of patients. This finding, which needs to be confirmed in a larger cohort of patients, indicates that sleep disorders affect the lives of CKD patients as soon a diagnosis of disease potentially progressing to end-stage renal disease was made.