Obstructive Sleep Apnea – Hypopnea and Incident Stroke

The Sleep Heart Health Study
Susan Redline, Gayane Yenokyan, Daniel J. Gottlieb, Eyal Shahar, George T. O’Connor, Helaine E. Resnick, Marie Diener-West, Mark H. Sanders, Philip A. Wolf, Estella M. Geraghty, Tauqeer Ali, Michael Lebowitz, and Naresh M. Punjabi

Scientific Knowledge on the Subject

Obstructive sleep apnea is a common health problem and is frequently associated with cardiovascular morbidity. Prior studies have not addressed the risk of stroke attributable to sleep apnea in the general population.

What This Study Adds to the Field

This study addresses whether sleep apnea is associated with an increased risk of ischemic stroke in men and women recruited from the community. This study provides compelling evidence, based on 8 years of prospective data from a large, geographically diverse community-based cohort of middle-aged and older adults, that modest to severe levels of sleep apnea are associated with an approximately threefold increase risk of ischemic stroke in men.

See the full article Redline: Obstructive Sleep Apnea–Hypopnea and Incident Stroke