Treating Apnea May Help BP

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By Chris Kaiser, Cardiology Editor, MedPage TodayPublished: May 22, 2012
Reviewed by Zalman S. Agus, MD; Emeritus Professor, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and Dorothy Caputo, MA, BSN, RN, Nurse Planner

Action Points

• Note that OSA is recognized by multiple hypertension guidelines as a secondary cause of hypertension and treatment of OSA is recommended in patients with refractory hypertension.
• Point out that one observational study reported here found a strong dose-response relationship between OSA and incident hypertension and a strong association between adherent CPAP therapy use and lower incidence of hypertension. In a second study, investigators found a treatment effect of CPAP prescription that did not reach statistical significance.

Treating obstructive sleep apnea in patients who have daytime sleepiness as a symptom may have an additional benefit -- a reduction in the risk of hypertension.
A pair of studies published in the May 23/30 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association point to a possible link between a reduction in hypertension and the use of continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP), but only one of the studies -- an observational one -- found a significant reduction in new onset hypertension.