The article presents the results of a polysomnographic study with simultaneous monitoring spontaneous nocturnal erections - Nocturnal Penile Tumescences (NPT) in 69 men with age-related androgen deficiency (AAD). Of these, 45 patients were diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS). In 34 of the 45 patients with OSAS, regimens of non-invasive ventilation with positive-positive airway pressure (CPAP) were selected. Titration was carried out using automatic CPAP-devices for 2 months. The control group (n=24) comprised men with AAD, matched by the "copy-pair" type without clinical manifestations of respiratory disturbances during sleep. Extreme fragmentation of sleep with a significant predominance of the 1st and 2nd stages of the slow sleep phase, the deficiency of deep sleep stages and the significant shortening of the fast sleep phase was leveled by using a constant positive pressure in the upper respiratory tract. CPAP-therapy produced the phenomenon of a "rebound" of slow-wave sleep and fast-sleep phase. Before treatment, men with OSAS had a disruptive pattern of NPT (quantitative and qualitative characteristics). CPAP-therapy resulted in its recovery and maximum preservation relative to fast sleep phase time boundaries. However, the trend towards increasing testosterone levels was not significant, which requires additional testosterone replacement therapy concurrently with CPAP therapy in patients with OSAS and AAD.
Keywords: CPAP therapy; androgen deficiency; pattern of nocturnal erections; polysomnography; sleep apnea syndrome; testosterone level.