A recent study, published in the specialized digital journal BMJ,, analyzes the data crossing of the records of patients with sleep apnea with others from cancer. In total, a sample of 62,811. “The results are surprising,” he explains. Francisco Jose Roig Vazquezspecialist in Pulmonology at HM Hospitales.
This expert points out that the study “has been able to objectify that severe nocturnal intermittent hypoxia was significantly more prevalent in the cases of patients with sleep apnea who had cancer.”
The explanation is that “hethe patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) have recurrent episodes of upper airway obstruction that lead to hypoxic or oxygenation deficit“, Add.
In addition, it details that the association between intermittent hypoxia and cancer “was primarily identified in the lung cancer, malignant melanoma and prostate cancer“. In the case of breast cancer, researchers found no connection.
“Therefore -he continues-, we know that nocturnal hypoxia is another factor that can lead to the tumor cell development, tumor growth, and generation of metastases. Now we have to find out if treating sleep apnea can lower the risk of developing a tumor.”
This new study confirms the relationship between apnea and cancer that has been the subject of debate in recent years in the scientific community. It was also revealed by a study published in March 2022 in the American National Library of Medicine -“Cancer and obstructive sleep apnea: An updated meta-analysis”. It analyzed 22 articles involving more than 32.1 million patients. The conclusion was that “The overall incidence of OSA-positive individuals with cancer was 46 (95% CI, 27-67)%, and the prevalence of cancers in OSA patients reached 1.53 (95% CI, 1.01-2 .31) times greater than that of individuals without OSA”.
Thus, their investigators concluded, “this meta-analysis indicated that there was a high prevalence of OSA in cancer patients, and that people with OSA were more likely to develop tumors, and the incidence was related to the severity of OSA.”
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