engleski

Cancer prevalence is increased in females with sleep apnoea: data from the ESADA study

The prevalence of cancer in our dataset was low (2%) compared to previous studies [10], suggesting under-referral of cancer patients, especially those with severe or lethal cancer. This referral bias may rather underestimate the true association between OSA and cancer. Cancer patients may have a different clinical presentation with insomnia affecting the results of sleep studies. It is important to further examine the influence of OSA on cancer types. However, the small number of cases limited our analysis to breast and prostate cancer. Furthermore, adjustment was not made for important confounders of cancer-risk, as physical activity, marital status, education, shift work and genetic propensity. Our study has two major strengths: the multi-centre design and the magnitude of the clinical dataset which increases the generalizability of our results and the substantial statistical power in the gender-specific subgroup analyses. In conclusion, our findings suggest that cancer prevalence is higher in European females with OSA. In an ongoing follow up study, we evaluate cancer incidence, mortality, aggressiveness and effect of treatment in our population.

sleep apnoea ; cancer ; gender ; hypoxia ; epidemiology

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