Sleep Apnea May Increases Risk of Severe COVID 19

Feb, 2021 - By SMI

The research was conducted to determine the link between severe COVID-19 and obstructive sleep apnea.

Sleep apnea is a sleep disorder in which breathing stops and starts repeatedly. If someone feels tired even after sleeping all night, you may have sleep apnea. Risk factors include age and obesity. Sleep apnea is more common in men. COVID-19 is a respiratory disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection. A subset of COVID-19 patients has experienced a severe illness with respiratory failure, hospitalization, or death. The common risk factors are age, obesity, diabetes, poor lung function, and cardiovascular disease. Now, according to new research, obstructive sleep apnea might increase the risk of severe COVID-19.

The most common cause of obstructive sleep apnea, in adults, is obesity and excess weight, which is connected to the soft tissue of the mouth and throat. This soft tissue can block the airway during sleep, which causes shortness of breath and can often lead to an increase in systolic and diastolic blood pressure, severe oxygen desaturation, and sleep disruption. The research was conducted to determine the link between COVID-19 and obstructive sleep apnea. During this research, the researchers gathered details of COVID-19 infection and obstructive sleep apnea diagnosis of 305 patients from the FinnGen study. Hospitalized infections were considered to be severe COVID-19.

Around 19.3% (16) of individuals, among the severe COVID-19 patients, had obstructive sleep apnea. The researchers also examined the other proven risk factors for both severe COVID-19 and obstructive sleep apnea from the FinnGen data. The team found that patients with both COVID-19 and obstructive sleep apnea are at higher risk (around 5-fold) of being hospitalized and developing complications. Moreover, the researchers found that obstructive sleep apnea is an independent risk factor for severe COVID-19 that requires hospitalization. This increased the risk regardless of sex, age, hypertension, asthma, diabetes, body mass index, coronary heart disease, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The research was published in the preprint server medRxiv.