SDB and hypertension

People with sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) have an increased risk of developing hypertension, independent of all relevant risk factors.^{1-4, 7} This risk is related to SDB severity; the more severe the SDB, the greater the risk of developing hypertension.

During healthy sleep, blood pressure decreases, but SDB patients instead tend to experience:

elevated blood pressure during sleep
prolonged cardiovascular stress, which can lead to increased blood pressure also occurring during the day.

SDB is present in more than 30% of patients with hypertension,⁵and in around 80% of patients with drug resistant hypertension.⁶ For this group of patients in particular, treatment with positive airway pressure therapy may be especially important.⁸

References

Peppard PE et al. N Engl J Med. 2000
Lavie P et al. BMJ. 2000
Nieto FJ, Young TB et al. JAMA. 2000

4: Bixler EO, Vgontzas AN at al. Arch Intern Med. 2000
5: Sjostrom C, Lindberg E et al. Thorax. 2002
6: Logan AG, Perlikowski SM et al. J Hypertens. 2001
7: Marin JM et al. JAMA. 2012
8: Montesi et al. Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine. 2012