Asthma And Sleep Apnoea: How Does It Affect Your Life?

When you have asthma, you are often at a higher risk for developing a sleep disorder known as obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA). Now, a Korean study has discovered that, if OSA does affect your wellness, it also significantly decreases your quality of life. Further, the researchers found that, if you are an asthma patient at high risk for OSA, you are also more likely to be older and have a higher body mass index (BMI) than asthma patients whose wellbeing is at a low risk for OSA.

According to lead author Sae-Hoon Kim, of the Seoul National University Bundang Hospital, Seongnam, and colleagues, ‘special consideration is needed for the care and treatment of patients with asthma at high risk for OSA, particularly elderly or centrally obese patients.’ This is after studying 217 asthma patients with an average age of 58.4 years, who were randomly selected from a tertiary-care clinic.

The study’s participants were assessed for OSA risk using the Berlin questionnaire, also completing the quality-of-life questionnaire for adult Korean patients with asthma (QLQAKA) and the asthma control test (ACT). The Berlin questionnaire revealed that 41% of the patients were classified as being at high risk for OSA, but the rest were classified as being at low risk for the disorder.

The results of the study were that, after age and gender were accounted for, patients at high risk for OSA had significantly lower QLQAKA scores (an average of 64.4) than low-risk patients (68.1), and this was evident in the activity domain in particular. Further, the average age of high-risk patients was 62.9 years and therefore significantly higher than their low-risk counterparts (55.3 years).

There were also significant differences in average BMI (25.7 vs. 23.9 kg/m2), visceral fat area (119.6 vs. 94.2 cm2), percent body fat (32.0 vs. 26.3%), and the prevalence of hypertension (64.0 vs. 18.8%). The asthma of high-risk patients was also treated for a longer period of time, at 123.9 days, compared to the 89.3 days of low-risk patient asthma treatment. High-risk patients were more likely to use an inhaled corticosteroid/long-acting β agonist combination than low-risk patients (86.5% vs. 75.0%), but there were no noteworthy differences regarding ACT scores or lung function.

In the Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, Kim and his team were led to conclude that ‘Our data provides clinical evidence that OSA is an important contributing factor for poor quality of life in adult patients with asthma and that central abdominal obesity may be involved in this association.’