Severe obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is one of the several medical conditions that has started receiving a lot of attention over the past few years. A large number of people suffer from one of its several forms, but healthcare experts say that the actual number of patients, most of which are yet unidentified, is a lot larger. The disease is extremely difficult to diagnose, as an accurate conclusion can only be drawn when subjects sleep in a testing lab, where they are hooked to various medical devices that monitor the activity patterns in their brains. It may be that researchers have now identified one possible trait of OSA that could make detection easier, a new scientific paper shows.

The work, which appears in the latest issue of the respected scientific journal SLEEP, proposes that patients suffering from sleep apnea also exhibit gray-matter concentration deficits in multiple brain areas. In other words, the scientists behind this research propose that some of the side-effects that are generally observed in OSA patients may actually be changing the morphological structure of the human brain directly. The effects apnea produces include memory impairment, cardiovascular disturbances, executive dysfunctions, and poor regulation of autonomic and respiratory control. The condition is caused by superior airways collapsing during sleep. This ends in breathing hiatuses of up to 15 seconds, during which time the brain receives no oxygen, and therefore suffers damage.

“Poor sleep quality and progressive brain damage induced by OSA could be responsible for poor memory, emotional problems, decreased cognitive functioning and increased cardiovascular disturbances. The use of continuous positive airway pressure – CPAP – therapy could stop further progression of brain damage in patients with severe OSA,” South Korean researcher Seung Bong Hong, MD, PhD, explains. He is a professor of neurology at the Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine Samsung Medical Center, in Seoul. In the CPAP approach, a breathing device is placed on OSA patients, and a machine forcefully inserts air in the lungs, preventing airway collapse.

In future works, the researchers say that they want to investigate the exact causes that underlie the brain's reduced gray-matter concentration in OSA patients. More clearly, they want to establish if the disease itself is producing these effects, or if they are the consequence of existing medical conditions that have not been detected in severe OSA patients before the apnea itself was diagnosed. The new work again highlights the importance of detecting sleep apnea, which is widely considered to be one of the most under-appreciated medical conditions of our time, e! Science News reports.