Sleep-Disordered Breathing in Healthy Aged Persons: One-Year Follow-up of Daytime Sequelae

We studied the waking medical, sleep, and psychological status of 28 healthy older persons who had undergone nocturnal polysomnography and daytime assessment approximately 1-year earlier. In a previous report based on this sample, we found that sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) indices were not related to concurrent measurements of daytime functioning. However, in the present study, we observed relationships between the original SDB indices and several measures of cardiopulmonary functioning obtained 1 year later. At follow-up, subjects with originally high levels of SDB had significantly higher systolic blood pressure and poorer pulmonary function test results, were more likely to report irregular heartbeats in the previous year, and had experienced more disruptive snoring than the remaining subjects. When combined with other recent data, these results raise the possibility that SDB exerts an insidious pathological influence on the health and daytime functioning of otherwise healthy older persons.