According to a recent study, sleep-disordered breathing (SDB), or sleep apnea, is associated with an increased cancer mortality risk.
“Clearly, there is a correlation, and we are a long way from proving that sleep apnea causes cancer or contributes to its growth,” says Dr F. Javier Nieto, lead author and expert sleep epidemiologist and chair of the Department of Population Health Sciences at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. “But animal studies have shown that the intermittent hypoxia that characterizes sleep apnea promotes angiogenesis-increased vascular growth – and tumor growth. Our results suggest that SDB is also associated with an increased risk of cancer mortality in humans.”
The team of investigators led by Nieto studied 22-year mortality data on 1522 subjects from the Wisconsin Sleep Cohort, a longitudinal, community-based epidemiology study of sleep apnea and other sleep problems that began in 1989.
The participants underwent overnight sleep studies that included polysomnography and many other tests at 4-year intervals. After adjusting for age, body mass index, sex, and smoking, results showed that both all-cause and cancer mortality were related to the incidence and severity of SDB in a dose-response manner. Specifically, patients with severe SDB died of cancer at a rate 4.8 times greater than patients with no sleep breathing disorder.
After excluding the 126 subjects who had used continuous positive airway pressure, the associations were still similar. Mortality rates were greater among non-obese subjects than obese subjects.
“In our large population-based sample, SDB was associated with an elevated risk of cancer mortality,” concluded Nieto. “Additional studies are needed to replicate these results. If the relationship between SDB and cancer mortality is validated in further studies, the diagnosis and treatment of SDB in patients with cancer might be indicated to prolong survival.”
Source: University of Wisconsin-Madison.
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