Snoring linked to brain injury, research findsRSS Feed

People who have restless nights could be suffering from brain injury, according to new findings.

Snoring and troubled sleep could be a sign of brain injury, indicates research by the Institute for Breathing and Sleep at Melbourne's Austin Health in Australia.

Criteria of obstructive sleep apnoea, which has been linked with a reduction in brain size, include consistent snoring, waking up in the middle of the night with a feeling of choking or tiredness during the day.

People with the sleep disorder experience a collapse of their airways at night, causing a breathing pain which wakes them. This could occur hundreds of times in the night when the brain is deprived of oxygen or there is a surge in blood pressure.

Brain scans carried out on 60 individuals in their mid-40s, recently diagnosed with the common sleep disorder, found a reduced volume of grey matter compared to other sleepers.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported that Dr Fergal O'Donoghue, the lead study author and sleep physician, explained that the damage was seen in two areas of the brain.

One is near the part that handles memory and the other in a region that controls smooth movement and some aspects of attention.

"What specific part of sleep apnoea might cause these changes we can't say, but we can see the changes that have occurred," Dr O'Donoghue said.

Individuals are more likely to have obstructive sleep apnoea if they are middle-aged, men, overweight, or have small airways possibly due to an unrelated illness.

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Posted by Timothy Walters
 

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