Background Obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) is a common disease that leads to daytime sleepiness and cognitive impairment. Attempts to investigate changes in brain morphology that may underlie these impairments have led to conflicting conclusions. This study was undertaken to aim to resolve this confusion, and determine whether OSA is associated with changes in brain morphology in a large group of patients with OSA, using improved voxel-based morphometry analysis, an automated unbiased method of detecting local changes in brain structure. Methods 60 patients with OSA (mean apnoea hypopnoea index 55 (95% CI 48 to 62) events/h, 3 women) and 60 non-apnoeic controls (mean apnoea hypopnoea index 4 (95% CI 3 to 5) events/h, 5 women) were studied. Subjects were imaged using T1-weighted 3-D structural MRI (69 subjects at 1.5 T, 51 subjects at 3 T). Differences in grey matter were investigated in the two groups, controlling for age, sex, site and intracranial volume. Dedicated cerebellar analysis was performed on a subset of 108 scans using a spatially unbiased infratentorial template. Results Patients with OSA had a reduction in grey matter volume in the right middle temporal gyrus compared with non-apnoeic controls (p<0.05, corrected for topological false discovery rate across the entire brain). A reduction in grey matter was also seen within the cerebellum, maximal in the left lobe VIIIb close to XI, extending across the midline into the right lobe. Conclusion These data show that OSA is associated with focal loss of grey matter that could contribute to cognitive decline. Specifically, lesions in the cerebellum may result in both motor dysfunction and working memory deficits, with downstream negative consequences on tasks such as driving.

Rationale: Although cognitive deficits are well documented in patients with sleep apnea, the impact on memory remains unclear. Objectives: To test the hypotheses that (1) patients with obstructive sleep apnea have memory impairment and (2) memory impairment is commensurate with disease severity. Methods: Patients with obstructive sleep apnea and healthy volunteers (apnea-hypopnea index ,5 events/h) completed a test battery specially designed to differentiate between aspects of memory (semantic, episodic, and working) versus attention. Sleepiness was measured on the basis of the Epworth Sleepiness Scale and Oxford Sleep Resistance test. Memory performance in patients versus control subjects was compared (Mann-Whitney U test; P , 0.01, Bonferroni corrected for multiple comparisons) and relationships between performance and disease severity were analyzed by linear regression. Measurements and Main Results: Sixty patients and healthy control subjects matched for age (mean 6 SD: patients, 51 6 9 yr; control subjects, 50 6 9 yr) and education (patients, 14 6 3 yr; control subjects, 15 6 3 yr) participated. ; control subjects, 27 [10-46]; P 5 0.0001). There were minimal differences in attention, visual episodic, semantic, or working memory; patients performed better than control subjects on Spatial Span forward and backward. Regression analysis revealed that Logical Memory Test performance was not significantly related to disease severity after controlling for age, education, and sleepiness. Conclusions: Obstructive sleep apnea is associated with impairment in verbal, but not visual, memory. The impairment was present across a range of disease severity and was not explained by reduced attention. Such verbal memory impairment may affect daytime functioning and performance.

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Study Objectives: Understanding the etiologic mechanisms underlying impaired glucose tolerance in obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) would assist development of therapies against this comorbidity. We hypothesized that in patients with OSA impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) would be associated with elevated levels of hormones associated with appetite regulation (leptin, ghrelin, neuropeptide Y [NPY] and peptide tyrosine-tyrosine [PYY]). Method: We studied 68 OSA patients (mean AHI 22 events/h) and 37 age and weight matched healthy controls recruited by advertisement. All participants received a standardized evening meal, attended polysomnography and an oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) on waking. Hormones were measured in blood taken before sleep (22:30) and at the start of the OGTT. Results: Impaired glucose tolerance was present in 54% of patients and 32% of controls (p = 0.05). The only differences between groups was that leptin was signifi cantly higher at 22:30 in OSA patients compared to controls (9.6 ng/L vs 7.9 ng/L, p = 0.05). OSA patients had marginally elevated plasma NPY levels at 22:30 (56.6 [52, 67] S C I E N T I F I C I N v E S T I G A T I O N SU ntreated obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is associated with insulin resistance, 1,2 and some studies suggest that treatment with CPAP improves glucose control, 3,4 although this was not found in a randomized controlled trial of diabetics with sleep apnea. 5 The observation that established type 2 diabetics cannot improve glucose control when their OSA is treated with CPAP, emphasizes the importance of understanding the pathophysiology of insulin resistance associated with OSA.One mechanism linking OSA with impaired glucose tolerance could be sympathetic nerve activity which is a recognized phenomenon in OSA 6 ; indeed it has previously been hypothesized that this process is responsible for the elevated leptin levels seen in newly diagnosed OSA patients. 7 Consistent with this sibutramine, a serotonin and noradrenaline reuptake inhibitor, was able to improve insulin resistance in OSA independent of visceral fat. 8 Moreover two studies raise the hypothesis that hormones involved in appetite regulation could contribute to impaired glucose tolerance. Broglio et al. 9 demonstrated that ghrelin administered to healthy subjects simultaneously with glucose, resulted in a transient decrease of insulin concentration that was coupled with signifi cant increase in glucose levels. In addition it has been reported that IR is associated with increased plasma leptin concentration independent of the body fat. 10 Consistent with this hypothesis, previous studies have reported that OSA is independently associated with neuroendocrine dysregulation; in fact OSA has been reported to be bRIEF SUMMARY Current knowledge/Study Rationale: Impaired glucose tolerance is a common and important co-morbidity of obstructive sleep apnea yet its pathogenesis, beyond the shared etiology of obesity is unknown. Here we tested the hypothesis that OSA might induce increases of appetite regulating h...