Treating sleep-breathing problem may ease blues
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New research suggests that symptoms of depression are fairly common among people suffering from obstructive sleep apnea, an ailment in which their airways become blocked and they frequently stop breathing for brief periods while they sleep.
However, treatment with continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP), which delivers pressurized air via a facemask to keep airways open while they sleep, may improve these depressive symptoms.
“I think clinicians need to recognize that patients ... with symptoms suggestive of depression may actually have sleep apnea,” Dr. Daniel J. Schwartz, from The Tampa Sleep Center at University Community Hospital in Florida, told Reuters Health.
Symptoms of depression such as being tired and just not enjoying life are also symptoms of obstructive sleep apnea, he added.
“This does not mean that all patients presenting with symptoms of depression should be tested for obstructive sleep apnea,” Schwartz emphasized.
“Simply asking questions, such as ‘do you snore?’ or ‘has anyone ever heard you gasp or stop breathing during sleep?’” can help identify people who might possibly have obstructive sleep apnea and deserve formal testing, he added.
Schwartz said that he decided to look into depression among people with sleep apnea after noting that about 40 percent of patients referred to his center were taking antidepressants, a much higher rate than in the general population.
His group’s study, which appears in the medical journal Chest, involved 50 patients with relatively severe obstructive sleep apnea that responded well to CPAP.
At the start of the study, 41 of the participants had scores on a standard depression assessment scale indicating that there were depressive symptoms present. Treatment with CPAP was associated with a significant improvement in the depression score among these individuals.
While the findings suggest that CPAP can improve depressive symptoms in obstructive sleep apnea patients, the association between these two disorders requires further study, Schwartz said.
“Are the symptoms of obstructive sleep apnea just being mistakenly attributed to depression or is there a cause-and-effect type relationship?” are questions that still have to be answered.
SOURCE: Chest, September 2005.
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