Linking obstructive sleep apnea with pulmonary hypertension via pooled prevalence and causal association: A systematic review, meta-analysis and Mendelian randomization.

BACKGROUND

The coexisting prevalence and causal associations between obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and pulmonary hypertension (PH) warranted further investigations.

OBJECTIVES

To investigate the prevalence of PH in patients with OSA and OSA in patients with PH and reveal the bidirectional causal association between OSA and PH via Mendelian randomization (MR).

METHODS

Eligible records were selected from PubMed, Web of Science and Scopus. The pooled prevalence of PH in OSA patients and OSA in PH patients, as well as the clinical characteristics of patients with PH-OSA overlap were evaluated. MR data were obtained from the Integrative Epidemiology Unit and the Finngen cohort. The inverse variance weighted mode was applied as the main approach in the MR analysis. MR‒Egger regression, leave-one-out analysis and the Cochrane Q test were also conducted.

RESULTS

Thirteen studies with 1792 participants were included. The pooled prevalence of PH in OSA and OSA in PH reached 36 % and 34 %, respectively. Patients with OSA-PH overlap were associated with a lower FEV1/FVC (%) compared with OSA patients without PH, and were associated with male sex, older age (year), greater body mass index (kg/m2) and greater apnea‒hypopnea index (n/h) compared with PH patients without OSA. The MR suggested that OSA has a causal effect on PH, whereas PH has no causal effect on OSA.

CONCLUSION

OSA and PH are highly prevalent mutual comorbidities. OSA appears to be causally linked to PH. However, further prospective and mechanistic studies are required to confirm this directionality and determine the clinical impact.