Rapid eye movement (REM)-related obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is characterized by apnea and hypopnea events due to airway collapse occurring predominantly or exclusively during REM sleep. Previous studies have reported that REM-related OSA occurs more commonly in women and younger individuals. However, external validity of this tendency has not been confirmed in a large clinical sample. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of gender and age on REM-related OSA after adjustment for several covariates based on their established clinical relationships to gender difference in OSA. A total of 3234 Japanese patients with OSA were enrolled in this study. We confirmed that female sex is an important risk factor for REM-related OSA, as reported by previous studies. Moreover, we showed that women aged over 50 years were at a greater risk than those aged under 50 years. These results suggest that hormonal changes in women might play an important role in REM-related OSA and might reflect its unknown pathophysiological characteristics.
Keywords: female sex hormone; obstructive sleep apnea; rapid eye movement-related obstructive sleep apnea.