Central Sleep Apnea May Cause Heart Failure

Central sleep apnea is a sleep breathing disorder that occurs when the brain fails to send the appropriate signals to the breathing muscles to initiate respirations. It is far less common than obstructive sleep apnea, which occurs when air can't flow into or out of the person's nose or mouth, although efforts to breathe continue.

Central sleep apnea is often seen in heart failure patients, and it may even contribute to heart failure, according to the findings of a recent Mayo Clinic collaborative study with Paola Lanfranchi, MD, and colleagues from the Fondazione Salvatore Maggiore in Italy.

"The goal of medicine is to not just treat symptoms of illness, but to find underlying causes," says Virend Somers, MD, PhD, a cardiologist and one of the study's authors. "In this instance, we are now finding that central sleep apnea, which has been previously understood as a symptom of heart failure, may contribute to the development of heart failure in people at risk." The study was published in the February 11 issue of Circulation, the Journal of the American Heart Association.