Does everyone have sleep apnea to some degree?

[cpapsue]

All of a sudden, everyone I confess to, wants to have a sleep study because they think they have it or that their partner has it. I read 4% of men and 2% of women have it - is it much more common?

I'm waiting for my machine and keep reading everything I can find. This website has made me feel less alone.

[roster]

All of a sudden, everyone I confess to, wants to have a sleep study because they think they have it or that their partner has it. I read 4% of men and 2% of women have it - is it much more common?

I'm waiting for my machine and keep reading everything I can find. This website has made me feel less alone.

Those number are much too low. I believe we will eventually find that more that 50% of the population has SDB or will develop it. There was a recent small study of people over the age of 65 that found this.

[deerhound]

I'll bet it is much more common. Now that I look back on my life I'm sure I had it as a teen, since I always had a hard time staying awake in class. I have always had to fight drowsiness if I was driving for much more than an hour. Now that I have my BiPap machine the roads are safer.

[Julie]

Well if it really were to be even slightly close to 50%, I think something needs rethinking - like life in general! If the above is true, how come we didn't all come with built-in Cpap ? This is nuts because if many of us apparently had apnea even as little children, we can't really blame it on 'lifestyle'. Is it really a normal accompaniment to the lives of half the population? Seems awfully far fetched to me (and makes me wonder why, in fact, everyone whoever lived prior to ~ 15 yrs ago didn't all die of OSA related causes - with CVA's (strokes) being much more prevalent. Somehow it just all seems a bit hard to believe.

[rested gal]

The Wisconsin Cohort study, which began back in... 1992 or 1993? ... is where the oft quoted estimated figure of "_% of men, _% of women have OSA" comes from. That longitudinal study is still going on, as far as I know.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8464434

The occurrence of sleep-disordered breathing among middle-aged adults.
Young T, Palta M, Dempsey J, Skatrud J, Weber S, Badr S.

Department of Preventive Medicine, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine, Madison.

BACKGROUND. Limited data have suggested that sleep-disordered breathing, a condition of repeated episodes of apnea and hypopnea during sleep, is prevalent among adults. Data from the Wisconsin Sleep Cohort Study, a longitudinal study of the natural history of cardiopulmonary disorders of sleep, were used to estimate the prevalence of undiagnosed sleep-disordered breathing among adults and address its importance to the public health. METHODS. A random sample of 602 employed men and women 30 to 60 years old were studied by overnight polysomnography to determine the frequency of episodes of apnea and hypopnea per hour of sleep (the apnea-hypopnea score). We measured the age- and sex-specific prevalence of sleep-disordered breathing in this group using three cutoff points for the apnea-hypopnea score (> or = 5, > or = 10, and > or = 15); we used logistic regression to investigate risk factors. RESULTS. The estimated prevalence of sleep-disordered breathing, defined as an apnea-hypopnea score of 5 or higher, was 9 percent for women and 24 percent for men. We estimated that 2 percent of women and 4 percent of men in the middle-aged work force meet the minimal diagnostic criteria for the sleep apnea syndrome (an apnea-hypopnea score of 5 or higher and daytime hypersomnolence). Male sex and obesity were strongly associated with the presence of sleep-disordered breathing. Habitual snorers, both men and women, tended to have a higher prevalence of apnea-hypopnea scores of 15 or higher. CONCLUSIONS. The prevalence of undiagnosed sleep-disordered breathing is high among men and is much higher than previously suspected among women. Undiagnosed sleep-disordered breathing is associated with daytime hypersomnolence.

N Engl J Med. 1993 Apr 29;328(17):1230-5.

Comment in:
N Engl J Med. 1993 Apr 29;328(17):1271-3.
N Engl J Med. 1993 Nov 4;329(19):1429.
N Engl J Med. 1993 Nov 4;329(19):1429; author reply 1429-30.
N Engl J Med. 1993 Nov 4;329(19):1429; author reply 1429-30.

I think the prevalence of "sleep disordered breathing that needs treatment" is much higher when you think about UARS and sleep disordered breathing causing arousals that disrupt sleep. Events that don't cause enough O2 drop to score as a "hypopnea" and thus don't add to the totals when calculating AHI.

[RosemaryB]

I'd say it's higher than that. In the course of my job I deal with many young adults. Because of my own experience and this forum, I have developed pretty good radar for it. If I observe or hear about things that seem obvious or subtle symptoms of sleep apnea, I've been able to convince a few of them to get checked for a sleep disorder. Guess what? Every one that has gotten it checked via a sleep study has been positive for a sleep disorder, usually sleep apnea. Some who haven't been tested say things like "Oh, my dad has that," making me pretty sure that they have it, too. I'm guessing it's more like 3 out of 10 with some type of sleep disorder, but that's just wild speculation, perhaps based on seeing people in a population that's more likely to have it or something like that.

IMHO, it's an epidemic and many of the disorders that seem common might be less common if both young and old people were tested and the young and got effective treatment while still young. Things like hypertension would go down, for instance. Perhaps giving meds for ADHD would go down a lot, too.

[Cpap Scuba diver]

I think those numbers are all too low, I spoke with my sleep doc about the numbers before I agreed to test , and he mentioned nearly 80 percent suffer mild to moderate apnea, seems high but I think its not far out of reality.