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Old men who have breathing problems in sleep more likely to suffer from irregular heartbeats.
This was the findings of a latest research conducted by medical experts who discovered that increasingly severe sleep-related breathing disorders in older men appear to be associated with a greater risk of abnormal heart rhythms (arrhythmias).
It is said that sleep-disordered breathing is a common condition that causes a number of physiologic events that could be stressful to the cardiovascular system, including inadequate blood oxygen levels at night and activation of the sympathetic nervous system (associated with the body’s fight-or-flight response).
Reena Mehra, M.D., M.S., of Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, Cleveland, and colleagues studied 2,911 men who underwent sleep testing by polysomnography between 2003 and 2005.
The number of times they experienced apnea (brief pauses in breathing) or hypopnea (shallow breathing) during sleep was recorded, as were any periods of time in which the oxygen level of blood in their arteries dipped below 90 percent (hypoxia).
The researchers said having more episodes of paused or shallow breathing was associated with increased odds of two types of arrhythmias-one involving the heart’s upper chambers (atria) and one involving the heart’s lower chambers (ventricles).
The team revealed obstructive sleep apnea-the most common type, involving a partial or complete blockage of the airways-was associated with irregular heartbeats caused by a problem with the lower chambers or ventricles.

Old men who have breathing problems in sleep need to go to the doctor fast to determine if they are also suffering from irregular heartbeats.

The researchers also discovered that lower blood oxygen levels also appeared to be associated with this type of arrhythmia.
However, central sleep apnea, involving a malfunction in brain signals controlling breathing muscles, was more strongly associated with arrhythmias in the atria or upper chambers.
Furthermore, the researchers explained more severe cases of sleep-disordered breathing were associated with higher odds of arrhythmia.
The researchers added there also seems to be a threshold effect such that moderate-to-severe sleep-disordered breathing confers the greatest increased odds of clinically significant arrhythmias independent of self-reported heart failure and cardiovascular disease.
The team concluded that the line of investigation also identified hypoxia as the possible culprit pathophysiologic characteristic of sleep-disordered breathing that may serve as the trigger of ventricular cardiac arrhythmia development in older men.
With this, they said the strong associations between central sleep apnea and atrial fibrillation [arrhythmia originating in the heart's upper chambers] suggest that central sleep apnea may be a sensitive marker of underlying abnormalities in autonomic or cardiac dysfunction associated with atrial fibrillation.