Why screen and be screened for airway / sleep problems? The lack of deep slow wave sleep has been shown to increase the production of tau protein, which is found in larger amounts in Alzheimer's sufferers. "In patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), amyloid-β (Aβ) plaques and tau protein tangles accumulate in the brain long before the appearance of clinical symptoms. Early intervention is critical for slowing neurodegeneration and disease progression. Therefore, reliable markers of early AD are needed... The results show that alterations in NREM sleep may be an early indicator of AD pathology and suggest that noninvasive sleep analysis might be useful for monitoring patients at risk for developing AD."