Pages

Sunday, October 12, 2014

Severe Sleep Apnea Linked to Resistant Hypertension

Medscape reported that according to the results of a 284-patient study published in the September issue of the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, “severe obstructive sleep apnea [OSA] may interfere with blood pressure (BP)–lowering treatment in patients at high cardiovascular disease risk or with established cardiovascular disease.” Researchers found that “patients with severe obstructive sleep apnea had a 4-fold higher odds of resistant elevated BP despite receiving an aggressive antihypertensive mediation regimen, even after consideration of well-recognized hypertension risk factors, including age, sex, race, body mass index, smoking, diabetes mellitus, and cardiovascular disease (adjusted odds ratio, 4.1; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.7 – 10.2).” An accompanying editorial concluded, “Since spironolactone has the potential to improve BP control and [apnea hypopnea index] in patients with resistant [hypertension], spironolactone should be considered, along with CPAP therapy, in these patients.”

No comments:

Post a Comment