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Dec 9, 2025
Sleep Apnea Linked to Parkinson's Disease, New Study Finds
The Virgin Islands Daily News
In a study published last week in JAMA Neurology, researchers linked obstructive sleep apnea, a condition that causes temporary pauses in breathing during sleep, with Parkinson's disease.
Parkinson's disease is a progressive nervous system disorder that causes tremors, stiffness, and difficulty speaking, moving and swallowing. It is the second-most common neurodegenerative disease in the United States, after Alzheimer's disease, with 90,000 people diagnosed each year.
There is no cure for Parkinson's disease, said Dr. Lee Neilson, a neurologist at Oregon Health & Science University who led the study. But the researchers did find that treating sleep apnea with a continuous positive airway pressure (or CPAP) machine was associated with a reduced likelihood of developing Parkinson's.
So identifying those at highest risk for the neurological condition -- and intervening early, Neilson said, "might make the biggest impact."
The researchers analyzed medical records from more than 11 million U.S. veterans treated through the Department of Veterans Affairs between 1999 and 2022. The group was predominantly male with an average age of 60, representing those at highest risk for sleep apnea, experts said.
The researchers found that about 14% of the participants had been diagnosed with sleep apnea between 1999 and 2022, according to their medical records. When the researchers looked at their health six years after those diagnoses, they found that the veterans with sleep apnea were nearly twice as likely to have developed Parkinson's disease compared with those who had not been diagnosed with sleep apnea.
This held even after controlling for other factors that could influence the development of sleep apnea or Parkinson's disease, including high body mass index and conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure, traumatic brain injuries and depression.
Those who started using CPAP machines within two years of their diagnoses were about 30% less likely to develop Parkinso
