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ORIGINAL RESEARCHSLEEP MEDICINEThe Influence of Aging on Pharyngeal Collapsibility During Sleep
Section snippets
Subjects
With the approval of institutional review boards, we studied 21 consenting, healthy individuals who were between 18 and 75 years of age. The subjects were recruited using e-mail announcements and posters, and through the Harvard Cooperative on Aging. We studied 8 women (mean age, 36 years [SD, 18 years]; age range, 19 to 72 years) and 13 men (mean age, 41 years [SD, 23 years]; age range, 18 to 75 years). The women who were < 50 years old were premenopausal based on regular menstrual cycles,
Results
Two subjects (19 and 75 years old) were unable to sleep well such that the arousal threshold could not be assessed. In another subject (68 years old), pharyngeal resistance could not be measured because of consistent airflow limitation during early inspiration (flow rate, 0.2 L/s). All other subjects completed the entire study, and their mean (± SD) age, weight, height, and BMI were 39 ± 22 years (age range, 18 to 75 years), 66 ± 11 kg (weight range, 48 to 90 kg), 164 ± 8 cm (height range, 147
Discussion
Our study shows that age independently influences both upper airway collapsibility and the increase in pharyngeal resistance during sleep, whereas BMI and gender explained minimal variance of either end point. We did not find any evidence for aging effects on the threshold to arouse from sleep after airway occlusion. In older (nonsnoring) persons, the magnitude of both Pclose2526 and the increase in Rp during sleep26 were comparable to those in previous reports2526 from young persons who snored
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This work was supported by the National Institute of Aging (Beeson Award K23 AG024837–01), grants No. HL 60292 and RO1-HL73146.
The authors have reported to the ACCP that no significant conflicts of interest exist with any companies/organizations whose products or services may be discussed in this article.