Severe sleep apnea suffers may have an increased risk of silent strokes and small lesions in the brain, according to researchers.

The researchers found that ninety-one per cent (51 of 56) of the patients who had a stroke had sleep apnea and were more likely to have silent strokes and white matter lesions that increased risk of disability.

Having over five sleep apnea episodes per night was linked with silent strokes.

Over one-third of patients with white matter lesions had severe sleep apnea, with over 50 per cent of silent stroke patients had been found to have had sleep apnea.

Jessica Kepplinger, M.D., the study’s lead researcher in the Dresden University Stroke Center’s Department of Neurology at the University of Technology in Dresden, Germany said, “We found a high frequency of sleep apnea in patients with stroke that underlines its clinical relevance as a stroke risk factor.”

“Sleep apnea is grossly unrecognized and still neglected. Patients who had severe sleep apnea were more apt to have silent strokes and the severity of sleep apnea increased the risk of being disabled at hospital discharge,” she stated.

Although men were more likely to have silent infarcts, correlations between sleep apnea and silent infarcts remained the same after adjustment for such gender differences.

Researchers indicated that sleep apnea should be treated the same as other vascular risk factors such as high blood pressure.

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