Effect of positive airway pressure therapy on oxidative stress in patients with obstructive sleep apnea

Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) is a syndrome characterized by complete or partial obstructions of upper airway during sleep, which result in hypoxia, reoxygenation, and arousals. The aims of this master's thesis is: (i) to evaluate the relationship between OSA syndrome and oxidative stress considering serum TOS and TAS parameters, which are the most basic markers of oxidant-antioxidant balance, (ii) to examine the relationship between TOS-TAS parameters and sleep parameters indicating the severity of the disease, and (iii) to find out the changes in TOS and TAS parameters after the Positive Airway pressure (PAP) treatment applied to patients with OSA syndrome for a month This research was conducted on a total of 70 people registered for the Polysomnography (PSG) at the Sleep Center of the Faculty of Chest Diseases at the Yozgat Bozok University. The control group of the study consisted of the patients who presented with suspicion of sleep-disordered breathing and had AHİ<5 after PSG recording. The treatment group included OSA cases with an AHİ value above 15. One-month PAP treatment was applied to the patients in the treatment group. Fasting blood samples were taken from the control group as well as from the one-month PAP treatment group and serum TOS and TAS values were measured accordingly. The findings obtained from the study showed that the TOS level, which are the oxidative stress markers, increased statistically (p <0.05) in parallel to the increase in severity of the disease, and the TAS level decreased (p <0.05) in the treatment group diagnosed with OSA. It was observed that AHİ, meanSPO2 and minSPO2 values improved, TOS values decreased and TAS values increased in the treatment group which received the PAP treatment. A statistical correlation wasn't observed between the control and treatment groups (p <0.05). As a result, this master thesis study has shown that oxidative stress is higher in patients with OSA. It was further demonstrated that administration of PAP therapy reduces oxidative stress and leads to improvements in sleep parameters indicating the severity of the disease.