Research Signal – Source date 2026-05-07
A difficult night can affect two people at once. A person living with Alzheimer’s disease or a related dementia may wake repeatedly, remain awake for long periods, or need supervision overnight. The caregiver’s sleep can then become shorter and more fragmented as well. REPAIR Sleep is a registered investigation of whether treating the pair together can improve sleep and psychological well-being.
The source for this report is a ClinicalTrials.gov record dated May 7, 2026. The registry record provided here describes REPAIR Sleep as not yet recruiting, with an estimated start in July 2026 and estimated completion in June 2028. Those dates remain estimates, and the record provides a study plan rather than treatment results.
Why sleep becomes a shared problem
REPAIR Sleep is built around a practical feature of dementia care: nighttime difficulties do not stay with one person. When a person living with dementia wakes often or needs help during the night, a caregiver may be drawn into the same disrupted schedule. Over time, poor sleep can affect mood, stress, daily functioning and quality of life for both members of the caregiving pair.
The study therefore asks more than whether one participant’s insomnia symptoms change. It asks whether a five-week program delivered to both people can improve sleep-related outcomes and psychological measures across the dyad. The planned comparison is important because a shared intervention may need to fit the routines, memory challenges and responsibilities of two people rather than assuming that one person can independently follow every sleep recommendation.
REPAIR Sleep brings CBT-I into the dyad
The intervention uses cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, or CBT-I. In plain terms, this approach works on the habits and thoughts that can keep insomnia going. REPAIR Sleep includes stimulus control, which uses consistent wake times and helps reinforce the connection between bed and sleep. It includes sleep compression, which adjusts time in bed to support more efficient sleep, using a milder form suited to older adults and people living with dementia. Relaxation exercises are intended to reduce bedtime arousal, while cognitive techniques address unhelpful thoughts and beliefs about sleep. Sleep hygiene covers environmental and behavioral conditions that can influence rest.
The distinctive adaptation is not simply putting a standard appointment online. Both members of the dyad attend five weekly, 60-minute videoconference sessions with a trained interventionist. They review sleep diaries and daily adherence checklists, practice the assigned strategies between sessions and wear a wrist actigraph for two weeks before and during the intervention.
Memory difficulties create another practical challenge. The registry describes written and recorded agreements and daily logs designed to help participants remember the plan and maintain sleep-related behaviors. These supports may also give the caregiver and the person living with dementia a shared reference point when routines become difficult to recall. The planned study can show whether this package is workable and associated with better outcomes; it cannot establish the value of any single support on its own.
The comparison is designed to test the whole program
Participants will be allocated at random to parallel programs. One group receives REPAIR Sleep. The other receives Healthy Living, an attention-matched program delivered through the same five weekly, 60-minute virtual sessions. Healthy Living addresses general wellness topics such as nutrition, physical activity and fall prevention, and includes sleep hygiene as one topic. It does not provide the specific behavioral and cognitive insomnia techniques used in REPAIR Sleep.
Equal contact time helps make the comparison more informative. If the REPAIR Sleep group improves more than the Healthy Living group, the difference could reflect the added sleep-focused program rather than simply receiving regular appointments, educational materials, facilitator attention or encouragement to work on health habits. Both groups also complete sleep diaries and use wrist actigraphy on the same schedule.
The design compares two complete program packages. It is not set up, from the information provided, to isolate stimulus control, sleep compression, relaxation or cognitive therapy one by one. The estimated enrollment is 120, but the registry wording supplied here does not assign that number to individual participants or caregiver–patient pairs.
Measures that separate symptoms from sleep patterns
The registered primary outcome is change in insomnia severity. The study plans to use the Insomnia Severity Index, a questionnaire covering problems such as difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, waking too early, dissatisfaction with sleep and the effect of sleep problems on daily life.
Secondary outcomes add different kinds of information. Total sleep time estimates how many minutes are spent asleep. Sleep efficiency describes the percentage of time in bed spent asleep. Nocturnal awakenings count nighttime interruptions. These measures are planned to come partly from actigraphy, in which a wrist-worn device uses movement patterns to estimate sleep and wake periods. Actigraphy is therefore a movement-based estimate, not a direct record of every moment of sleep.
The registry also lists psychological outcomes, including affect, depressive symptoms, stress and quality of life. Assessments are planned at baseline, one week after the intervention and at approximately three and six months after it, represented in the record by weeks 8, 20 and 32. The broader registry description says participants will be followed for about nine months. Repeated assessments would allow researchers to examine whether any changes remain visible beyond the end of the five-session program.
The study will also examine whether adherence to REPAIR Sleep components and interpersonal support within the dyad are associated with outcomes. Those analyses may help describe which pairs were able to use the strategies and how support between the two participants related to change. They are observational associations within the trial, not proof that one particular behavior caused an improvement.
What participation will require
Virtual delivery may reduce the need for travel, but it does not make participation passive. Both people are expected to attend each session together, complete records, practice sleep strategies between meetings and wear a wrist device during the specified monitoring period. The Healthy Living group has corresponding journals, educational materials and actigraphy requirements, so the comparison includes a similar basic level of attention and measurement.
At the time described by the registry record, no completed treatment comparison is available. The planned design can test whether REPAIR Sleep produces greater improvements than Healthy Living in insomnia symptoms, sleep estimates and psychological well-being. It does not yet establish actual recruitment, an observed treatment effect, tolerability or how consistently participating pairs will be able to follow the program. The question is about sleep care and related well-being, not whether the intervention changes the course of dementia.
What better sleep support could mean for dementia care.
For caregivers and people living with dementia, the practical possibility is coordinated sleep treatment at home, with both people learning and practicing strategies within the same routine. If REPAIR Sleep produces sustained improvements beyond Healthy Living and proves workable for participating pairs, it could offer a way to address disrupted nights while also supporting everyday psychological well-being for the two people most closely linked to the problem.
That benefit remains conditional on the trial’s future findings. A successful result would support a more coordinated approach to sleep problems in dementia care; it would not by itself demonstrate disease modification or guarantee that every caregiver–patient pair could use the program in the same way.
Key Sources
- Primary source: REPAIR Sleep Study
Government or Regulator · Clinical Trial · 2026-05-07
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