Promising Treatment for Sleep Apnea

First drug treatment for sleep apnea has been discovered by a study at the University Of Gothenburg, published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

The new drug - carbonic anhydrase (CA) inhibition, where CA is an enzyme that serves to maintain a balance between carbonic acid and carbon dioxide in the body, reveals promising results in reducing breathing pauses in sleep apnea.

‘New drug is found to have a drastic improvement in reducing breathing pauses with an average of more than 20 per hour for patients with sleep apnea. ’

The study patients were randomly assigned to two groups receiving either 400 or 200 mg of the CA inhibitor, and a third group (the control group) that received a placebo for four weeks.

Drug for Sleep Apnea

It was found that the treatment reduced the number of breathing pauses and promoted oxygenation during the night.

"Among the patients who received the higher dosage of the drug, the number of breathing pauses decreased by approximately 20 per hour. For just over a third of patients in the study, only half of their breathing pauses were left, and in one in five the number fell by at least 60 percent," says Jan Hedner, professor of Pulmonary Medicine.

"These therapy options take time to get used to and, since they frequently are perceived as intrusive or bulky. Insufficient user time is therefore common. If we develop an effective drug, it will therefore make life easier for many patients and, in the long run, potentially also save more lives," says Ludger Grote, senior lecturer at Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg.

Source: Medindia