Symptoms Of Progressive Supranuclear Palsy

Extreme Fatigue

As with any serious illness, patients with PSP are subject to extreme fatigue and constantly feeling tired all the time. Out of all the symptoms an individual can experience with PSP, one study concluded that eighty percent reported feeling fatigued and experienced difficulty sleeping and sleep disorders. A study was performed on participants with PSP and their sleeping patterns to determine how the severity of the disease affected their sleep. Many individuals with PSP also suffer from severe insomnia and spend on average, two to six hours awake per night.

In the study, among these patients, sleep latency became shorter and the number of times an individual would awaken during the night increased with greater motor impairment, and total time spent sleeping declined as dementia worsened. The findings of the study indicated that in PSP, insomnia is related to the severity of the condition, and sleeping patterns overall worsened as the disease progressed. Insomnia is so incredibly common for PSP patients that it is worse for those with PSP than patients with Parkinson’s disease or Alzheimer’s, and researchers believe it is due to the degenerative changes in brain structures that are responsible for sleep maintenance.