BRAIN CREATE postdoc Dr. Veronica Guadagni receives the CSS Sex and Gender Student Abstract Award

Obstructive Sleep Apnea is a sleep disorder characterized by the reduction or complete cessation of breathing during sleep. This is followed by a severe decrease in the content of oxygen in an individual’s blood which has been linked to development of cardiovascular disease, cognitive decline and even dementia later in life. To be diagnosed with sleep apnea, individuals have to undergo an expensive sleep test in a laboratory and often women do not meet screening criteria and are therefore not referred to sleep studies. Furthermore, knowledge of the exact mechanisms that characterize sleep apnea in the two sexes is lacking. In the study conducted by Dr. Guadagni and colleagues that will be presented at the 2021 Canadian Sleep Society conference, possible mechanisms underlying the relationship between sleep apnea and cognitive decline are investigated. The focus is on differential mechanism that characterize the association between sleep apnea, sleep architecture and cognition in both men and women. This is a first step toward a better understanding of the role of sex and hopefully in the future, gender, in the pathogenesis of obstructive sleep apnea and associated cognitive decline.