According to Drs. Daniel J. Schwartz and Gillian Karatinos of The Sleep Center at University Community Hospital in Tampa, Florida, people with obstructive sleep apnea are often depressed.
A study conducted by Drs. Schwartz and Karatinos, published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, concludes that treatment with continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) may improve the depression symptoms in patients with obstructive sleep apnea.
In a prior study of 50 obstructive sleep apnea patients, researchers found a significant improvement in depression symptoms after beginning home CPAP treatment. Follow up with these patients after 1 year found that the ongoing CPAP treatment resulted in continued improvement in the patient’s depression symptoms.
“The significance of our findings,” Dr. Schwartz said, “is that symptoms which might otherwise be ascribed to depression — feelings of sadness, discouragement about the future, feelings of excessive personal failures, perceived decreases in self-confidence, a sense of being overly self-critical, the inability to derive pleasure from things, and even suicidal (thoughts) — may at times be attributable to obstructive sleep apnea, an easily treatable medical illness.”
The report states that some patients that are being treated for depression with medications might experience better anti-depression results with CPAP treatment if their depression is due to obstructive sleep apnea.
Their report also says, however, that it is not completely understood how CPAP treatment improves the symptoms of depression.
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