Australian researchers have found that the effects of sleep apnoea on the brain of a sleeping patient are far worse than previously thought.
Sleep apnoea has already been linked to learning impairment, stroke and premature death but this latest research from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) has revealed that snoring linked to sleep apnoea may impair brain function much more than previously thought.
A study by UNSW Brain Sciences analysed the effects of sleep apnoea on the brain while the patient was sleeping and found that those suffering from obstructive sleep apnoea experience similar changes in brain biochemistry as people who have had a severe stroke or who are dying.
Previous studies have focused on recreating oxygen impairment in awake patients but this new research is the first to analyse - in a second-by-second timeframe - what is happening in the brains of sufferers as they sleep.
Lead author of the study, Professor Caroline Rae says in the past it was thought that apnoeic snoring had absolutely no acute effects on brain function but this is not true.
Sleep apnoea affects as many as one in four middle-aged men, with around 3% developing a severe form of the condition characterised by extended pauses in breathing, repetitive asphyxia and sleep fragmentation.
As children with enlarged tonsils and adenoids are also affected, this new research has raised concerns about the possibility of long-term cognitive damage.
Professor Rae and her researchers from Sydney University's Woolcock Institute used magnetic resonance spectroscopy to study the brains of 13 men with severe, untreated, obstructive sleep apnoea and they found that even a moderate degree of oxygen desaturation during the patients' sleep had significant effects on the brain's bioenergetic status.
Professor Rae, who is based at the Prince of Wales Medical Research Institute, says the findings show that lack of oxygen while asleep may be far more detrimental than when awake, possibly because the normal compensatory mechanisms don't work as well when a person is asleep.