Electromyography activity level in rapid eye movement sleep predicts neurodegenerative diseases in idiopathic rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder: a 5-year longitudinal study

To investigate whether baseline electromyography (EMG) activity during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep predicts the development of neurodegenerative diseases over time in patients with idiopathic REM sleep behavior disorder (iRBD). A total of 216 patients with polysomnography-confirmed iRBD were recruited from September 1997 to December 2016 with a mean follow-up duration of 5.0 ± 3.7 years (median: 4.0, range: 0.5–19.0). Neurodegenerative diseases were ascertained according to standard diagnostic criteria during follow-up. Time-dependent receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were employed to evaluate the dynamic predictive performance of EMG activity over time. Both tonic and phasic EMG activity were dichotomized into ‘mild’ and ‘severe’ categories by the ROC curves estimated optimal cut-offs. A total of 58 patients (26.9%) developed neurodegenerative diseases. The predictive performance of tonic EMG activity was stable (area under the curve of approximately 0.68) over time, while the performance of phasic EMG activity was significantly superior to chance only after five years of follow-up. The optimal cut-off for prediction at five years was 15.4% (sensitivity, 0.69; specificity, 0.57) and 7.8% (sensitivity, 0.79; specificity, 0.47) for tonic and phasic EMG activity, respectively. Cox proportional hazards regression analyses further revealed that severe tonic (adjusted HR: 2.76, 95% CI: 1.35–5.62) and phasic EMG activity (adjusted HR: 3.10, 95% CI: 1.10–8.71) were associated with early development of Parkinson's disease (PD) and dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), respectively. Tonic but not phasic EMG activity may serve as a stable biomarkers for predicting the progression of neurodegeneration in iRBD. •EMG activity level in REM sleep may be a biomarker of neurodegeneration in RBD.•Tonic EMG activity level in REM sleep stably predicts Parkinson's disease.•Phasic EMG activity level in REM sleep unstably predicts neurodegenerative diseases.