People who suffer from asthma are at an
increased risk of developing sleep apnea, a disorder that causes
breathing difficulties while sleeping, a new study has warned.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin used data from the Wisconsin
Sleep Cohort Study, which has been following approximately 1,500 people
since 1988. They found that patients who had asthma were 1.70 times
more likely to develop sleep apnea after eight years. "This is the
first longitudinal study to suggest a causal relationship between asthma
and sleep apnea diagnosed in laboratory-based sleep studies," said
Mihaela Teodorescu, assistant professor of medicine at the university.
"Cross-sectional studies have shown that OSA is more common among those
with asthma, but those studies weren't designed to address the direction
of the relationship," Teodorescu said. The connection between asthma
and obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) was even stronger among participants
who developed asthma as children. Childhood-onset asthma was associated
with 2.34 times the likelihood of developing sleep apnea. The
researchers also found that the duration of asthma affected the chances
of developing sleep apnea. For every five-year increase in asthma
duration, the chances of developing OSA after eight years increased by
10 per cent. Participants in the Wisconsin Sleep Cohort, who were all
between the ages of 30 and 60 in 1988, completed in-laboratory
polysomnography, clinical assessments and health history questionnaires
every four years. For the asthma-OSA study, the researchers focused on
773 cohort enrollees who did not have OSA when they joined the study and
then determined whether their sleep apnea status had changed after
eight years. During the eight-year follow-up period, 45 subjects
developed asthma, and they were 48 per cent more likely to develop
new-onset sleep apnea. However, because the sample size was small, the
increase lacked statistical significance. "Forty-eight per cent
represents a large difference," said Paul Peppard, an assistant
professor of population health sciences at the university and a
principal investigator of the Wisconsin Sleep Cohort Study. "This is
one result that calls for a follow-up study. If confirmed by a larger
study with more asthma cases, the finding would have important clinical
relevance," Peppard said. "For now, it makes sense for clinicians to
consider asthma history, as well as more traditional factors associated
with OSA such as obesity, when deciding whether to evaluate patients for
OSA with a sleep study," he said. The study will be presented at the
American Thoracic Society 2013 International Conference in Philadelphia.
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