Brienne Miner, MD, MHS

I am a physician with advanced training in geriatrics, sleep medicine, and epidemiology. My overarching research goal is to improve symptom management in older adults. My research has evaluated dyspnea as a multifactorial geriatric health condition, establishing multiple cardiorespiratory and non-cardiorespiratory factors that are strongly associated with dyspnea in older adults. I have evaluated the epidemiology of insomnia and hypersomnia (i.e., daytime sleepiness) symptoms in persons aged 75 years and older, and identified several factors (depression, low physical activity, and primary sleep disorders) associated with the severity of insomnia and hypersomnia. This body of work informs the evaluation and management of important patient-centered outcomes in older adults.

In ongoing work, I am evaluating insomnia with objective short sleep duration as a multifactorial geriatric health condition, including the association of this phenotype with aging-related conditions. My work has demonstrated that sleep complaints in older persons are multifactorial. In addition, it shows that self-reported sleep measures may not properly characterize the severity of sleep disturbances, including recent findings that short sleep duration is frequently under-reported in older persons. These findings indicate that sleep problems may be more prevalent and severe than reported by older persons, and suggest new, comprehensive methods for evaluation of sleep complaints are needed. Hence, a focus of my ongoing work is to use validated self-report measures and objective, home-based methods to rigorously evaluate sleep deficiency in older persons. This aging-appropriate strategy may identify high-risk individuals for targeted interventions and decrease adverse outcomes and costs, all while increasing patient-centeredness in care delivery.