Regular snoring linked to uncontrolled high blood pressure

People’s homes are full of devices these days. Some of them provide valuable health information that may be useful for research and clinical care. Data from consumer sleep and blood pressure monitors have been used recently to examine the relationship between snoring and hypertension.

Recordings collected over six months, provided information about the average proportion of time spent snoring during sleep for 12,287 individuals. Snoring was detected (using proprietary analysis of electronic signals generated by movement) by a device placed under the mattress of each participant’s bed.

Data from the ‘Sleep Analyzer’ were matched to average blood pressure measurements, collected intermittently by participants, over a corresponding period using a home monitor.  The technologies used for these measurements are different from devices used clinically, but there is evidence demonstrating their validity.

10,868 of the participants in the study were male and were generally middle-aged and overweight. Nearly half of the men (46%) snored for more than 5% of the night; 30% of men snored for more than 10% of the night; 15% snored for more than 20% of the night; and 8% of men snored for more than 5% of the night. Other data in the study are not broken down by sex/gender, but analyses were ‘adjusted for sex’.

Increased snoring duration was associated with increases in systolic and diastolic blood pressure and increases in the rate of uncontrolled hypertension. Twenty per cent of people in the highest quartile of snoring duration (who snored for 12-83% of the night) had systolic blood pressure equal to or greater than 140 mmHg, and 24% had diastolic pressure at or above 90 mmHg compared to rates of 7% and 8%, respectively, in the quartile with the least amount of time snoring.

The use of consumer devices in this study allowed for collection of data, averaged over time, from many more subjects than previous investigations. Arguably, the nature of the measurements also makes them more relevant to the real world than observations under clinical conditions.

The use of consumer data comes with limitations. Subjects for the study had chosen independently to purchase and use the devices, introducing obvious bias into recruitment. There is no guarantee that devices were used according to the manufacturer’s instructions or under the same conditions upon which the devices were initially validated. The authors note the possibility of the sleep monitors’ accuracy being affected by bed partners, for instance.

The authors conclude that “long-term nightly snoring assessments indicate that snoring is highly prevalent in the adult community and is associated with a ~20 to 80% increase in hypertension prevalence, independent of OSA severity”. Even in the absence of sleep apnoea, people who snore for a large proportion of the night have a high prevalence of hypertension.

The results of this opportunistic study support previous work using overnight polysomnography, suggesting that early identification and management of snoring may reduce cardiovascular risk.

Tim Moss

Biomedical Research Scientist

Associate Professor Tim Moss has PhD in physiology and more than 20 years’ experience as a biomedical research scientist. Tim stepped away from his successful academic career at the end of 2019, to apply his skills in turning complicated scientific and medical knowledge into information that all people can use to improve their health and wellbeing. Tim has written for crikey.com and Scientific American’s Observations blog, which is far more interesting than his authorship of over 150 academic publications. He has studied science communication at the Alan Alda Centre for Communicating Science in New York, and at the Department of Biological Engineering Communication Lab at MIT in Boston.