Sleep Apnea increases Death Risk

By Assam on August 4, 2008

The findings of a new study published in the edition of the journal Sleep, suggests that people with Sleep Apnea are more likely to die from any cause than are people without the disorder. Sleep Apnea, also known as sleep-disordered breathing is not a disease condition that kills you acutely. But, it is a condition that erodes your health over time.

Sleep Apnea

An 18-year-long study known as the Wisconsin Sleep Cohort followed 1,522 randomly selected men and women, whose ages ranged from 30 to 60 and who were deemed generally healthy at the beginning of the study. Each study participant spent a night under observation, undergoing a standard sleep test, at a sleep clinic to assess the presence or extent of sleep-disordered breathing.

Over the course of the study, sleep apnea was found to affect the lives of the participants diagnosed with the disorder, with death coming to them during the course of the study at a rate that was two to three times higher than study participants who did not have the disorder. The participants with the most severe cases of sleep apnea were at greatest risk of death due to all causes.

Anybody can get sleep apnea, regardless of age, but the condition is most common in men. People who are elderly or overweight are at increased risk of developing sleep apnea, too, a situation that particularly alarms the research team. Sleep apnea is keeping between 12 million and 18 million Americans awake at night although many of these people don’t even know they have it.

Sleep-disordered breathing or sleep apnea occurs when the upper airway becomes narrowed or even blocked entirely while a person is relaxed during sleep. As the airway is blocked, the air supply to the lungs is threatened or stopped altogether. It’s not uncommon for breathing to stop completely, sometimes for mere seconds but sometimes for as long as a few minutes. The interruption in breathing also interrupts the amount of oxygen circulating in the bloodstream. The robust snoring comes from the person waking up violently each time the breathing stops. Some people experience many episodes of sleep apnea over the course of just one night.

In the same issue of the journal Sleep, a separate study of 380 adults between 40 and 65 in Australia came to a similar conclusion. This study found that after 14 years, about 33 percent of participants with moderate to severe sleep apnea had died, compared with 6.5 percent of people with mild apnea and 7.7 percent of people without apnea.

The researchers fears that cases of sleep apnea will increase in US, as Americans are living longer than ever and the elderly population is also growing. In the mean time, number of overweight or obese people is also increasing, which increases the risks of sleep apnea.

Readers Comments