Could Sleep Apnea Increase the Risk of Pneumonia? Study

A recent study shows that people who have sleep apnea could be at a higher risk of pneumonia, according to a team of researchers from the Taipei Veterans General Hospital in Taiwan.

"This study showed that sleep apnea is an independent risk factor for incident pneumonia," wrote Dr. Vincent Yi-Fong Su and Dr. Kun-Ta Chou of the department of chest medicine at Taipei Veterans General Hospital in Taiwan, via Health Day. "Our results also demonstrated an exposure-response relation in that patients with more severe sleep apnea may have a higher risk of pneumonia than patients with sleep apnea of milder severity."

For the study, researchers examined medical data on 341,000 patients from the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database that collected information for over 11 years. In this sample, 6,816 people had sleep apnea and 27,284 did not. The researchers calculated that in the sleep apnea group, 9.36 percent of them, or 638, had developed pneumonia.

In the control group, however, 7.77 percent or 2,119 of them had pneumonia. That's 8.09 percent or the equivalent to 2,757 who have suffered from the lung infection. The people who did have the infection tended to be older with other health conditions, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes and dementia.

Researchers also noted that the greater severity of the disease typically increased the risk of developing pneumonia. Yet even though the team could not identify the direct link of this connection, they said they believe that this sleeping disorder may increase a higher chance of aspirating liquid from the throat and into the lungs, impairing the immune systems ability to properly fight off this and other health issues.

"Following episodes of apnea-hypopnea, resultant hypoxemia may stimulate patients to breath against a closed airway, therefore causing the intrathoracic pressure to become more negative. The more-negative intrathoracic pressure induces a higher pressure gradient and a vacuum pressure through the upper airway," the researchers said, via The Huffington Post.

What do you think?

More information regarding the study can be found via the Canadian Medical Association Journal.