By Will Boggs, MD

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - People with sleep apnea are continually tired because of the sleep interruptions they experience from breathing interruptions during the night, and now it's been shown that loud snoring contributes to the problem.

Many studies have "used snoring as a surrogate marker of sleep apnea," Dr. Hiroshi Nakano told Reuters Health. "However, it is possible that snoring itself has detrimental effects to health."

Nakano, at Fukuoka National Hospital in Japan, and colleagues looked at the relationship between snoring and subjective daytime sleepiness using data on 515 patients with sleep apnea. The team found that all levels of snoring intensity correlated with sleepiness measured on a standard scale, and the effect was strongest in the loudest snorers.

The heaviest subjects tended to be the loudest snorers, but snoring loudness itself, regardless of weight, was related to sleepiness, the investigators report in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine. In fact, the degree of sleepiness reported by each individual was more closely related to snoring intensity than to the number of breathing interruptions experienced during the night.

It's known that sleep apnea not only results in daytime sleepiness but also leads to increased blood pressure and eventually heart problems.

"We have also examined the relationship between snoring intensity and daytime blood pressure in the same subjects (and) are now preparing to publish," Nakano added. "We are conducting another study to elucidate the snoring versus sleepiness relationship in the general population, excluding sleep apnea patients."

SOURCE: Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, December 15, 20086.

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