People suffering from sleep apnea have greater chances of getting pneumonia, a latest study shows.
Researchers at the Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Taiwan, studied the medical data of 341,000 patients collected from the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database. The information was gathered over 11 years.
Of these patients, 6,816 had sleep apnea and 27,284 had no medical condition. The study findings showed that 9.36 percent or 638 people with sleep apnea developed pneumonia. On the other hand, 7.77 percent (2119) of those in the control group got the disease.
Overall, 8.09 percent (2,757) of the participants suffered from lung infection. The researchers noted that pneumonia was mostly found in older participants or in those who had a medical history of health problems such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease and dementia.
The researchers said that people with sleep apnea had higher chances of developing pneumonia. They added that the risk increased with the advanced stage of the sleep disorder.
Although the researchers could not determine the link between pneumonia and sleep apnea, they explained that people with the sleeping disorder have a higher chance of aspirating liquid from their throat and into their lungs. This can lead to pneumonia. In addition, people with sleep apnea have disrupted sleep, which can significantly hamper the body's immune system in fighting the infection.
"Following episodes of apnea-hypopnea, resultant hypoxemia may stimulate patients to breath against a closed airway, therefore causing the intrathoracic pressure to become more negative. The more-negative intrathoracic pressure induces a higher pressure gradient and a vacuum pressure through the upper airway," the researchers explained, reports Huffing Post.
"This study showed that sleep apnea is an independent risk factor for incident pneumonia," Dr Vincent Yi-Fong Su and Dr Kun-Ta Chou, Department of Chest Medicine, said in a press release. "Our results also demonstrated an exposure-response relation in that patients with more severe sleep apnea may have a higher risk of pneumonia than patients with sleep apnea of milder severity."
The study, 'Sleep apnea and risk of pneumonia: a nationwide population-based study,' was published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
