New Sleep Apnea Treatment Improves Depression?

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Do you have depressive symptoms as a result of obstructive sleep apnea? If so, there’s something new in the works that could help!

A new study of 779 patients was recently done at The Cleveland Clinic to assess the depressive symptoms related to obstructive sleep disorder (OSA). OSA is a sleep-related breathing disorder that occurs when the tissue in the back of the throat collapses and blocks the airway, causing the body to stop breathing during sleep.

The new treatment is called positive airway pressure (PAP). PAP therapy keeps the airway open with a stream of air whilst sleeping.

Before the patients began participation in the study, they were asked to fill out a standardized PHQ-9 form, a tool used for assisting primary care clinician in diagnosing depression. The patients were assessed again with the same form following the PAP treatment, and all showed improvement in their scores; however patients using their PAP devices for more than four hours per night had greater score improvements than those failing to use PAP as prescribed. Other factors that affected the improvements in the scores were whether the patient was sleepy and marital status.

"The score improvements remained significant even after taking into account whether a patient had a prior diagnosis of depression or was taking an anti-depressant," Charles Bae, MD, principal investigator in the study was quoted saying.

Source: SLEEP 2012, the 26th annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies (APSS)