Does this medicine make apnea worse

Escitalopram 5mg, taken at 5pm? The sticker on it says "may cause drowsiness and dizziness".
Thanks. Generally my AHI is below 1.0 , and lately it is going up slightly to around 2.0.

It is the generic for Lexapro

Cardsfan wrote:Escitalopram 5mg, taken at 5pm? The sticker on it says "may cause drowsiness and dizziness".
Thanks. Generally my AHI is below 1.0 , and lately it is going up slightly to around 2.0.

It is the generic for Lexapro

Hi Cardsfan,

Hard to say without a trial of several days.

But the important issue is having a 2 AHI is still fine and if your sleep is fine and you feel good, I wouldn't worry about it. If not, then if course, talk to your doctor about the situation.

49er

I don't think that med is known to make apnea worse in the sense that it might cause the airway to collapse more easily or need more like muscle relaxers or opiates might.

BUT what it can do is mess with sleep architecture a bit and might cause a few wake ups/arousals and you might see a few more Clear Airway events maybe get flagged because of the arousal.
So while it isn't known to affect the airway tissues...it can affect overall sleep.
Read up on the side effects beyond the "may cause drowsiness" sticker. There is a rather long list.

A change from 1.0 AHI to 2.0 isn't really anything to be alarmed about but I would look at what event category seems to be slightly increased.

Thank you all. What has increased is the CA events all through out the night.

What about promazine?

Are the Clear Airway events clustered around known awake times or random throughout the night?

tiredandscared wrote:What about promazine?

http://drugs.webmd.boots.com/drugs/drug ... =promazine

and yes...same sort of potential for increased arousals or insomnia which might cause some Clear Airway events to get flagged because these machines don't know if we are awake or asleep.
They just measure air flow.

It is not known for causing floppy airway tissues to get floppier though. So in the sense of making OSA worse...it isn't likely to be that big of an issue...main culprits to make OSA worse are muscle relaxers and opiates with muscle relaxers being the worst.

Look at the link above for complete list is side effects and if you are taking it...might explain some of the problems you were having with cognition....see the side effect of "confusion".

I don't remember where I saw it, but there are side effects listings that indicate percentage of subjects
affected by each side effect. Of course, that would be no help unless you are totally "average".
{{{ Remind me again why we are here. }}}

Last night was one of the worst, they seem to have been spread out all through the night. I looked back 2 months, and I really do not see a pattern, except that most of my total events are CA.
I started on this medicine about 3 months ago, and the Dr said it takes a few weeks for it to become most effective.
I just want to know if I should be alarmed with this change in my events. The medicine seems to be helping with my anxiety, what it was prescribed for.

I wouldn't worry about that small of a change in AHI.
If you remember being awake at times during the night you might be having some SWJ (Sleep/Wake/Junk) getting flagged but other than being a curiosity I wouldn't spend a lot of time trying to figure it out.
Not much you can do about it and there's no need to do anything about it when the AHI is low like that and most of it is Clear Airway.

Thank you so much. I so much appreciate your time and expertise everyone.