Research

Hormonal

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) causes sustained high sympathetic nerve activity and blood pressure during sleep, which is significantly attenuated by continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) treatment.

If you have obstructive sleep apnea, your body is under significant stress during sleep, with high blood pressure and nerve activity that don't drop as they should. Using CPAP therapy can significantly reduce this stress, lowering your blood pressure and sympathetic nerve activity to safer levels, which helps protect your heart and blood vessels.

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We conclude that patients with obstructive sleep apnea have high sympathetic activity when awake, with further increases in blood pressure and sympathetic activity during sleep. These increases are attenuated by treatment with CPAP.
Virend K. Somers et al. · Journal of Clinical Investigation · 1995

Why this rating

The study uses direct microneurography and intra-arterial blood pressure measurements in a controlled clinical setting with clear statistical significance (P < 0.001).

Source

Sympathetic neural mechanisms in obstructive sleep apnea.

Virend K. Somers et al. · Journal of Clinical Investigation · 1995

DOI 10.1172/jci118235

mechanism_only · n=18Cited 2,487×
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DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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