Sleep Apnea Treatment Restores Brain Tissue

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- New research shows patients with sleep apnea who use a CPAP machine may be able to restore lost brain tissue.

Obstructive sleep apnea is a sleep-related breathing disorder that involves a decrease or complete halt in airflow. It happens when the muscles relax during sleep, causing soft tissue in the back of the throat to collapse and block the upper airway. A common treatment for these patients is CPAP therapy, which provides a steady stream of air through a mask.

The study involved 17 patients who had more than 30 breathing pauses per hour of sleep, which indicated severe sleep apnea. These patients were compared to 15 healthy controls. Brain scans were performed to determine volume and tissue concentration differences in the gray matter of the brain.

Results show sleep apnea patients who used the CPAP machine had an increase of gray-matter volume after three months of therapy. These gray-matter volume increases were observed in the hippocampal and frontal structures of the brain. Before undergoing CPAP therapy, these same patients had reductions in gray-matter volume.

"Our results also suggest that specific neuropsychological measures are valuable tools for the assessment of therapy success and can offer to patients and physicians the evidence that adherence to treatment can lead not only to clinical but also to brain-structural recovery," Vincenza Castronovo, Ph.D., principal investigator of the study, was quoted as saying.