Abstract W P170: Effect of “Snoring Alone” and “Snoring Plus Phenomenon” on Cardiovascular Diseases, or Fatal, or Nonfatalstroke

Abstract

Background: We evaluated the effect of snoring and snoring with unique habitual sleep patterns on cardiovascular events. Methods: We analyzed the data from Women's Health Initiative (WHI) observational study. The participants in the observational study were 93,676 women aged 50-79 years who were recruited from September 1994 to December 1998, with annual follow-up through August 14, 2009 (an average of 8 years). Cox proportional hazards analysis was used to examine the effect of snoring alone and snoring with sleep duration >8 hours and/or frequent daytime napping (snoring plus phenomenon) and the outcome of total cardiovascular disease defined as cardiovascular death, nonfatal myocardial infarction, or nonfatal stroke after adjusting for potential confounders. Results: Of the 93676 participants, 25777 reported snoring alone and 329 reported snoring plus phenomenon. The cumulative endpoint of cardiovascular death, nonfatal myocardial infarction, or nonfatal stroke was seen in 1140 of 25777 (p<.0001) and 24 of 329 (p<.0001) participants with snoring alone and snoring plus phenomenon compared with 3316 of 61396 non snoring participants. Compared with non-snoring participants, snoring plus phenomenon was not associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular endpoint (relative risk [RR] 1.1, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.8 -1.4, p=0.6), after adjusting for age/gender, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, cigarette smoking, and hyperlipidemia. Snoring alone was not associated with risk of cardiovascular endpoint (RR 0.9, 95% CI 0.5 -1.5, p=0.6). The risk of non-fatal and fatal stroke was higher among participants with snoring plus phenomenon (RR 1.7, 95% CI 1.0 -3.0, p=0.047) but not snoring alone (RR 0.8 95% CI 0.6 -1.0, p=0.07) after adjusting for potential confounders. Conclusions: Persons with snoring plus phenomenon (but not snoring alone) are at risk of cardiovascular endpoints of nonfatal and fatal strokes.