• M S Aldrich, J E Shipley, R Tandon, P D Kroll, and K J Brower.
• University of Michigan Alcohol Research Center, Ann Arbor.
• Alcohol. Clin. Exp. Res. 1993 Dec 1; 17 (6): 1179-83.

AbstractSleep apnea and related disorders are not uncommon in abstinent alcoholics. We assessed the relationship between age and the presence and severity of sleep-disordered breathing in alcoholism by performing one night of polysomnography on 75 abstinent alcoholic subjects undergoing treatment for alcoholism. Sleep-disordered breathing (defined as 10 or more apneas plus hypopneas/hr of sleep) was present in 17% of 66 men aged 22-76 and in 0 of 9 women aged 28-63 years. Three percent of men under age 40 years had sleep-disordered breathing compared with 25% of men between ages 40-59 and 75% of those above age 60. Although alcoholics with sleep-disordered breathing had a higher body mass index than those without, the increased frequency over age 40 was statistically significant after controlling for the effects of body mass index. Sleep in subjects with sleep-disordered breathing was significantly more disturbed than in subjects without sleep-disordered breathing. Our findings suggest that sleep-disordered breathing in older male alcoholics is more prevalent than has been reported in most studies of normal men and that the increase in sleep-disordered breathing that occurs with age in alcoholics is greater than the age-related increase in sleep-disordered breathing that occurs in healthy elderly men. Furthermore, sleep-disordered breathing is a significant contributor to sleep disturbance in a substantial proportion of male alcoholics above the age of 40 years.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

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