Black Men Are Dying At Increasing Rates From Sleep Apnea Compared To Their White Counterparts, Study Finds

The sleeping disorder, which is very common in the United States, is one of the most dangerous because breathing patterns can abruptly stop while an individual is in slumber. Researchers Yu-Che Lee, Ku-Yun Chang, and M. Jeffery Mador obtained trends related to sleep apnea over two decades to compare statistics between Black and white Americans.

“Despite several epidemiologic studies focusing on the prevalence, risk factors and clinical presentations of sleep apnea, no study, to our knowledge, has evaluated the disparity of sleep apnea-related mortality among different racial groups,” said researcher Yu-Che Lee, according to the University of Buffalo. “We therefore brought up an idea to do the research discussing the difference of sleep apnea-related mortality and mortality trends from 1999 to 2019 between Black and white Americans.”

The study was conducted by analyzing sleep apnea-related mortality between 1999 to 2019 from the National Center for Health Statistics, provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The research relied on joinpoint regression analysis and compared related outcomes.

Research showed Black males “had a continuous mortality increase over the study period.” For both Black men and women, their causes of sleep apnea were attributed to cardiac arrest, hypertension, obesity, and chronic renal failure.

“This is the first study to demonstrate the disparities of sleep apnea-related mortality and different mortality trends between Black and white Americans,” Dr. Lee said, according to Black News. “These findings should give clinicians some insights into the problem to develop more tailored strategies and treatments to reduce racial disparities in outcomes from sleep apnea.”