Adult asthma sufferers are at a higher risk for obstructive sleep apnea.
If you have asthma and have been having trouble getting a good night's sleep recently, you may want to see your doctor about sleep apnea, according to a new study from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. The researchers found that adults with pre-existing asthma were more likely to develop new-onset obstructive sleep apnea (OSA).
Several previous studies had already demonstrated a correlation between asthma and sleep apnea in adults, but Dr. Mihaela Teodorescu and her colleagues at the University of Wisconsin wanted to investigate whether asthma was a risk factor for developing sleep apnea later in life. They used data from the Wisconsin Sleep Cohort Study, in which Wisconsin state employees were randomly selected to attend overnight sleep studies every four years beginning in 1998.
They found that study participants with asthma were much more likely to develop OSA over the course of the study than those without it, and the longer they had had asthma, the higher the odds. 27 percent of participants with asthma developed OSA during the first four-year period between sleep studies, as compared to 16 percent of those without asthma. People who had been diagnosed with asthma more than 10 years ago were the most likely to develop OSA of any group.
The researchers suggested that periodic evaluations of asthma patients for OSA may be justified based on this research. OSA can have debilitating effects on sufferers in the long term, so it is critical to diagnose it as soon as possible.
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