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Impaired sustained attention and lapses are present in patients with mild obstructive sleep apnea

  • Sleep Breathing Physiology and Disorders • Original Article
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Abstract

Background

Severe obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) directly affects the quality of life, mood, and sustained attention of individuals, but it has not yet been established in the literature, if these changes also affect patients with mild OSA. The purpose of this study was to investigate such negative effects on the parameters described above.

Methods

A controlled study was held at the Universidade Federal de Sao Paulo, Department of Psychobiology. Thirty-nine mild OSA patients and 25 controls were included. Volunteers could be of both genders with body mass index (BMI) ≤35 kg/m2 and age between 18 and 65 years. Both groups were subjected to full-night polysomnography (PSG), the subjective assessment of mood (Beck Inventory of Anxiety and Depression), Functional Outcomes of Sleep Questionnaire (FOSQ), and the psychomotor vigilance task (PVT) five times during the day. We considered mild OSA patients those with apnea–hypopnea index (AHI) score between 5 and 15. The control group included subjects with AHI scores <5, respiratory disturbance index (RDI) scores ≤5, arousal index values ≤15, and Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS) values ≤9.

Results

Mild OSA patients were older and more obese than the controls. After adjusting for age, BMI, and schooling years, there was an increased number of total lapses (3.90 ± 4.16 and 2.43 ± 5.55, p = 0.004).

Conclusions

Patients with mild OSA showed increased sustained attention lapses compared with normal subjects.

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Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the Research Incentive Fund Association (Associação Fundo de Incentivo à Pesquisa, AFIP), the Coordination for Enhancement of Higher Education Personnel (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior, CAPES), and the Federal University of São Paulo (Universidade Federal de São Paulo, UNIFESP). We also acknowledge Profa Sabine Pompeia to PVT analysis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Medicina, Disciplina de Pneumologia, Universidade Federal de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

    Gabriela Pontes Luz, Luiz E. Nery & Luciana Badke

  2. Departamento de Psicobiologia, Disciplina de Medicina e Biologia do Sono, Universidade Federal de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

    Thais Moura Guimarães, Luciana Oliveira e Silva, Glaury Coelho, Aline Millani-Carneiro, Sergio Tufik & Lia Bittencourt

  3. Center for Narcolepsy, Sleep and Health Research, College of Nursing, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

    Terri E. Weaver

Authors
  1. Gabriela Pontes Luz
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  2. Thais Moura Guimarães
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  3. Terri E. Weaver
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  4. Luiz E. Nery
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  5. Luciana Oliveira e Silva
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  9. Sergio Tufik
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Gabriela Pontes Luz.

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Financial support

Conselho Nacional de Pesquisa (CNPq), Associação Fundo de Incentivo à Pesquisa (AFIP); Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES).

Conflict of interest

The author Terri E. Weaver declares a conflict of interest: Royalty fee from Philips, Inc. and investigator-initiated grant from TEVA, Inc. The other authors declare no conflicts of interest in this study.

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Clinical Trials Database (NTC01461486)

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Luz, G.P., Guimarães, T.M., Weaver, T.E. et al. Impaired sustained attention and lapses are present in patients with mild obstructive sleep apnea. Sleep Breath 20, 681–687 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11325-015-1279-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11325-015-1279-7

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