Obstructive sleep apnea phenotypes and cardiovascular risk: Is there a role for heart rate variability in risk stratification?
- Carter, Jason R. [ Montana State University: Health & Human Development ]
- Mokhlesi, Babak
- Thomas, Robert J.
The global prevalence of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is estimated to be nearly 1 billion people [1], and this is likely to only increase in the coming years and decades given the strong association between OSA and obesity [2]. Although OSA is associated with adverse cardiovascular health, the utilization of continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) to treat OSA has not consistently yielded significant and/or clinically meaningful improvements in certain cardiovascular outcomes [3, 4]. For example, several meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials report significant, yet marginal (i.e. 2–3 mmHg), reductions of blood pressure after CPAP in participants with OSA [5–9]. Moreover, three prospective community-based studies reporting on the association between OSA severity and incident hypertension (i.e. Wisconsin Sleep Cohort Study, Sleep Heart Health Study, and Victoria Sleep Cohort Study) have yielded conflicting findings [10–12]. We have previously posited that a...