A study on the impact of sleep apnea on our body´s biological clocks, published in the scientific journal EBioMedicine, The Lancet, highlights the urgent need to find new strategies that improve and anticipate the diagnosis of this obstructive respiratory disease, one of the most disturbed sleep disorders. prevalent in the world, but still  underdiagnosed.

Conducted by a team from the Center for Neuroscience and Cell Biology at the University of Coimbra (CNC-UC), the study aimed to understand how sleep apnea, can «promote disruptions in the functioning of biological clocks, which in turn may be the basis of the different comorbidities associated with the pathology, including cardiovascular or metabolic diseases (such as diabetes or obesity), or contribute to their worsening ”, explains Ana Rita Álvaro, principal investigator of the project .The scientific article published in the scope of the study, entitled “Long-term Continuous Positive Airway Pressure Treatment Ameliorates Biological Clock Disruptions in Obstructive Sleep Apnea”, is available here.
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Image: the treatment of obstructive sleep apnea, represented here by a facial device (CPAP), recovers the well-defined oscillations and the serenity of sleep. (Adapted from the painting “The Dream” by Henri Matisse, 1940). [Designer Gil Costa]

Cristina Pinto, Ana Rita Álvaro, Angela Relógio, Cláudia Cavadas and Laetitia Gaspar