Rognvaldsson et al recently published an article in the Journal of Sleep looking at the relationship between OSA diagnosis and severe COVID-19. The team were keen to understand if OSA itself was an independent risk factor for suffering severe COVID-19. There are some overlapping risk factors or considerations for OSA and for developing severe COVID-19 (eg BMI, age, gender). They concluded that OSA was associated with twofold increase in risk of severe COVID-19, and the association was not explained by obesity or other comorbidities.
The subjects of the study were all community-dwelling Icelandic citizens 18 years of age and older diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2 infection in 2020. A total of 4,756 individuals diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2 infection in Iceland were included in the study (1.3% of the Icelandic population), of whom 185 had a diagnosis of OSA. We do however know that only a small portion of those with OSA are formally diagnosed, which may be limitation for this study.
The article is free to access and can be found online here:
https://doi.org/10.1093/sleep/zsab272
Reference:
Kristján Godsk Rögnvaldsson, Elías Sæbjörn Eyþórsson, Össur Ingi Emilsson, Björg Eysteinsdóttir, Runólfur Pálsson, Magnús Gottfreðsson, Gunnar Guðmundsson, Vilhjálmur Steingrímsson, Obstructive sleep apnea is an independent risk factor for severe COVID-19: a population-based study, Sleep, Volume 45, Issue 3, March 2022, zsab272, https://doi.org/10.1093/sleep/zsab272
