Incidence of Parkinson disease significantly lower with early CPAP treatment, but no reduction seen with late CPAP treatment
By Elana Gotkine HealthDay Reporter
TUESDAY, March 4, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is associated with an increased risk for Parkinson disease (PD), according to a study scheduled for presentation at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology, to be held from April 5 to 9 in San Diego.
Isabella Montano, from the Veterans Affairs (VA) Portland Health Care System in Oregon, and colleagues assessed the risk for PD in patients with OSA and examined the impact of early versus late continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) treatment using data from the VA Corporate Data Warehouse spanning 20+ years and more than 20 million veterans.
Overall, 1,552,505 OSA-positive and 9,759,246 OSA-negative veterans were identified. The researchers found that OSA-positive was associated with a significantly increased risk for PD after inverted probability treatment weighting analysis, balancing birthyear/age, sex, smoking status, race, ethnicity, pseudo-randomization by covariates, and adjustment for competing risk for death, with 1.8 extra PD cases per 1,000 people at five years after onset of OSA. The incidence of PD was similar for the late use of CPAP (more than two years since OSA diagnosis) versus no use of CPAP. In contrast, a significantly lower incidence of PD was seen with early use of CPAP (within two years of diagnosis), with a reduction of 2.3 cases of PD five years after OSA onset.
“While our study found an increased risk of Parkinson’s disease, the good news is people can do something about it, by using CPAP as soon as they are diagnosed with the sleep disorder,” coauthor Gregory D. Scott, M.D., Ph.D., also from the VA Portland Health Care System, said in a statement.
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