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Depression, sleep problems linked

Respiratory Care Weekly, September 27, 2006

Patients with breathing problems during sleep are more prone to depression, according to the September 18 Archives of Internal Medicine. In 3,200 sleep studies of 1,400 patients, Paul E. Peppard, PhD, and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison concluded that people with mild breathing-related sleep disorders were 1.6 times more likely to be depressed, and those with moderate or severe sleep disorders were 2.6 times more likely to be depressed. Of the about 1,000 cases of depression diagnosed, two-thirds were mild and one-third were moderate to severe.

"Our longitudinal findings of a dose-response association between sleep-related breathing disorders and depression provide evidence consistent with a causal link between these conditions and should heighten clinical suspicion of depression in those with sleep-related breathing disorders," they conclude in the article.

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