Sleep Disorders: Pregnant Women with Apnea at Higher Risk

Photo Credit: Mahalie

In a new study presented at The American Thoracic Society's National meeting, a relationship was discovered that even when obesity was controlled for, mothers that had sleep apnea showed an increased risk of diabetes or hypertension developing during pregnancy.

These amazing results showed that:

When the women's weight was taken into account, sleep apnea was associated with a doubling of the incidence of gestational diabetes and a fourfold increase in the risk of pregnancy-induced hypertension, which includes eclampsia and preeclampsia. According to the Preeclampsia Foundation, eclampsia and preeclampsia are responsible for several hundred women's deaths and more than a thousand fetal deaths annually in the United States.

The mechanisms are still not well understood. It has been hypothesized that since sleep apnea causes these women to stop breathing, a fight or flight mechanism raises the blood pressure enough to get them to wake up. Also during these periods of apnea we see that the body can produce more stress hormones, and the body then produces more glucose and you can see a decrease in insulin sensitivity, which could lead to diabetes.

This could be very stressful on both the mothers and the fetus. Obviously more research is needed to confirm these findings and determine what causes this relationship to occur.

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