Excess weight and sleep-disordered breathing.
Level 5 - mechanism / opinion, no new human data
Narrative review and population-level risk modeling without systematic review methodology
PubMed 16160020 · doi:10.1152/japplphysiol.00587.2005
What was done
The authors synthesized epidemiological and clinical literature on excess weight and sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) and modeled the population-attributable fraction of SDB due to overweight and obesity using estimated 2003 US age, sex, and body mass index distributions for adults aged 30 to 69 years.
What was found
An estimated 17% of US adults aged 30–69 years have mild or worse SDB (apnea-hypopnea index [AHI] ≥ 5), with 41% of those cases attributable to excess weight (BMI ≥ 25 kg/m²). Approximately 5.7% of adults have moderate or worse SDB (AHI ≥ 15), with 58% of these cases attributable to excess body weight.
Why it matters
This analysis quantifies the substantial proportion of sleep-disordered breathing attributable to excess body weight, highlighting obesity reduction as a critical public health strategy to curb SDB prevalence.
Limits
The abstract presents modeled epidemiological estimates based on secondary distributions rather than a primary empirical cohort study. Total sample sizes and confidence intervals are not reported in the abstract, and attributable fraction calculations rely on causal assumptions across underlying observational studies.
Cited by
- supports Approximately 1 in 4 to 5 men over the age of 30 has sleep-related breathing issues, rising to about 50% for men with a BMI over 30.