Obstructive Sleep Apnea Common in Type 1 Diabetes.
Miriam E Tucker | June 08, 2015
BOSTON — Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is common in people with type 1 diabetes and is associated with abnormal glycemia and microvascular complications but not body mass index (BMI), a new study finds.
The data were presented June 7, 2015 here at the American Diabetes Association (ADA) 2015 Scientific Sessions by Laurent Meyer, MD, an endocrinologist at Hopitaux Universitaires de Strasbourg, France.
The link between type 1 diabetes and OSA has been reported in three previous small trials, but this study of 90 adults with type 1 diabetes is the largest such trial to date and the first to use both continuous glucose monitoring and sleep studies to investigate the relationship between OSA and both hypo- and hyperglycemic variation, Dr Meyer explained.
In the study, OSA was particularly common among those with long disease duration and was associated with higher rates of diabetes complications, including retinopathy and peripheral neuropathy.
“The main message for clinicians is to think of OSA in type 1 patients with a long duration of diabetes. With the design of our study we can’t say check at 10 or 15 years, but in my opinion if [a patient has] a duration of more than 20 years, it’s important to check for OSA,” Dr Meyer told Medscape Medical News in an interview.
Sleep apnea is ordinarily associated with obesity, but the French patients in this study were not excessively overweight, with a mean BMI of 26 kg/m2, suggesting that the OSA may be due to other factors.
“In our study the BMI was near normal.…I think perhaps it’s linked to cardiac autonomic neuropathy.…Like other degenerative complications, it may be linked to an infiltration of soft tissue in the upper airways by glycated products. I think OSA must be considered a degenerative complication [of diabetes], like neuropathy or retinopathy,” Dr Meyer said.
Asked to comment on the study, session chair Howard A Wolpert, MD, director of the Institute for Technology Translation at the Joslin Diabetes Center, Boston, Massachusetts, told Medscape Medical News, “I think it has fascinating implications. There’s still a lot more work that needs to be done in terms of clarifying the issues, but if the association they found with peripheral neuropathy is related to the hypoxemia they’re having and [since] there is a treatment for OSA [continuous positive airway pressure]…it would be really important to start treating people.”
However, Dr Wolpert cautioned that the continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) part of the study was small, that it lasted only one night, that there were more smokers in the French study population than among US type 1 diabetes patients, and that no data were reported on activity patterns or insulin dosing.
“I think they need to do longer-term CGM analysis to actually see how representative these data are of the individual experience and the larger population,” Dr. Wolpert said.
Dr Meyer agrees. “To be sure, it’s important to have a long-term longitudinal study,” he told Medscape Medical News.
