OSA is characterized by frequent apnea and low ventilation during sleep, leading to blood oxygen saturation, sleep splitting, and daytime sleepiness. The common symptoms of sleep apnea syndrome are severe habitual snoring at night, accompanied by sleep apnea, frequent awakenings, anxiety and tension during awakenings, waking up early, feeling tired in the morning, experiencing significant drowsiness during the day, often complaining of deteriorating intelligence, memory loss, personality changes, and abnormal exercise behavior. Sleep apnea syndrome can cause serious social problems, such as traffic accidents, and mental complications, such as depression. Cardiovascular diseases, including coronary heart disease, arteriosclerosis, heart failure, arrhythmia, hypertension, stroke, and pulmonary arterial hypertension, are the most serious complications.
OSA is often combined with metabolic syndrome, and repeated nocturnal hypoxemia can exacerbate oxidative stress and inflammatory reactions, increase the risk of coronary artery calcification, plaque instability, and plaque vulnerability, and exponentially increase the risk of cardiovascular events and death [8–12]. In the Sleep Heart Health Cohort, after 8.7 years of follow-up, male patients aged 40–70 years with AHI ≥ 30 times/h had a 68% increased risk of developing coronary heart disease [13]. AHI is an independent risk indicator for predicting CVD mortality, and studies have shown that CVD patients with OSA have a 62% increased 5-year mortality rate compared with the control group [14].
The pathophysiological mechanism of CHD in OSA is currently unclear. Dursunoglu et al. [15] confirmed that sleep apnea promotes inflammation and thrombosis during atherosclerosis development. Respiratory obstruction occurs during sleep. Because of the role of breathing, the chest wall produces a large negative pressure, which increases the transmural pressure of the heart, leading to an increase in the afterload. At the same time, due to the increase in venous return, the increase in preload, and the congestion of the pulmonary circulation, hypoxia will lead to an imbalance of oxygen demand and supply to the myocardium, which will lead to angina pectoris and myocardial infarction.
Arterial stiffness is caused by dysregulation of elastin fibers and collagen, oxidative stress, mineral metabolism disorders, and low-grade inflammation [16], which can lead to increased myocardial preload and decreased coronary perfusion pressure. Arterial stiffness is a strong independent predictor of CVD and adverse cardiovascular events [17].
The main reason for increased arterial stiffness is adverse functional and structural changes in the vascular wall, including extracellular matrix degeneration; collagen deposition and cross-linking; elastin depletion and rupture; infiltration of vascular smooth muscle cells, macrophages, and monocytes; inflammation; and endothelial dysfunction [16]. An increase in arterial stiffness can reduce the compliance of the arterial system, leading to an increase in aortic systolic pressure and pulse pressure, thereby increasing the left ventricular afterload and myocardial load, resulting in left ventricular hypertrophy and increased myocardial oxygen demand [18]. In addition, an increase in forward pressure wave velocity caused by aortic sclerosis promotes the early arrival of reflected pressure waves during systole, resulting in a decrease in diastolic coronary artery perfusion pressure and myocardial oxygen delivery, leading to myocardial ischemia [19]. Therefore, an imbalance in the oxygen supply to the coronary arteries can lead to increased susceptibility to myocardial ischemia. In patients with CHD and OSA, this situation is particularly evident because of the multiple pathways involved in oxygen imbalance.
PWV is the most widely used measurement method for arterial stiffness (AS). It has strong prognostic value for predicting cardiovascular events and all-cause mortality. PWV is considered the "gold standard" for evaluating arterial stiffness owing to its simplicity, non-invasiveness, reproducibility, and proven predictive value in epidemiological and clinical studies.
Atherosclerosis in patients with CHD is not only a disorder of lipid accumulation and metabolism, but also that local or systemic inflammatory processes play a synergistic role in accelerating disease progression, ultimately leading to plaque rupture and clinical events [20]. Several studies have shown that inflammatory factors, such as high-sensitivity C-reactive protein and interleukin-6, are associated with cardiovascular risk [21–22]. Therefore, based on previous studies, inflammation plays an important role in both OSA and arterial stiffness. This study also selected several commonly used inflammatory factors in clinical practice (WBC, CRP, N, IL-6, PCT) as the research subjects and observed the changes in inflammatory factors before and after different treatment regimens. Our study found that after six months of CPAP treatment, the levels of these common inflammatory factors were significantly reduced, indicating that CPAP may improve the prognosis of patients with CHD and OSA by reducing the inflammatory response.
CPAP is the first-line treatment for OSA, and its impact on arterial PWV has always been a concern. Vlachuantoni et al. [23] believed that CPAP treatment is an effective intervention to reduce arterial stiffness and has a positive impact on the survival rate of OSA patients with cardiovascular disease. However, the research results of Cardoso et al. [24] indicated that 6-month CPAP treatment can prevent further progression of the disease but cannot reduce aortic PWV. In addition, Galeneau et al. [25] conducted a long-term follow-up of OSA patients treated with CPAP for at least 4 years. The results showed that the increase in arterial stiffness after CPAP treatment was mainly related to primary cardiac metabolic disease. The study subjects were all patients with simple OSA, whereas our study subjects were patients with CHD complicated with OSA. The results showed that after 6 months of CPAP treatment for patients with coronary heart disease complicated by OSA, their PWV levels improved significantly. We further compared the PWV results of moderate OSA patients (AHI: 15–30) and severe OSA patients (AHI ≥ 30) after CPAP treatment and found no statistically significant difference between the two groups, indicating that CPAP is effective in improving arterial stiffness in patients with CHD complicated by moderate and severe OSA. This also suggests that CPAP treatment should be started in a timely manner for patients diagnosed with CHD complicated by moderate or severe OSA in clinical practice. However, the limitation of this study lies in the small number of patients in the CPAP treatment group, and further expansion of the sample size is needed for further research.
Shamsuzzaman et al. [26] found that plasma levels of high-sensitivity C-reactive protein were significantly elevated in patients with OSA and independently correlated with the severity of sleep apnea syndrome. Shinji [27] measured the plasma levels of inflammatory factors such as hypersensitive C-reactive protein(hs-CRP), IL-6, and TNF-α in 40 patients with sleep apnea syndrome and found that these inflammatory factor levels were correspondingly elevated in patients with sleep apnea syndrome. Our research found that both the experimental and control groups showed significant improvements in CRP, IL-6, and PCT levels after six months of treatment. However, compared with the control group, the decrease in CRP, IL-6, and PCT levels was more pronounced after CPAP treatment, indicating that CPAP can alleviate the levels of plasma inflammatory factors in patients with CHD complicated by OSA. Studies have shown that inflammation is involved in the occurrence of adverse events such as OSA or arterial stiffness. Therefore, we attempted to analyze whether there was a correlation between the improvement in PWV and the decrease in inflammatory factors in patients with CHD complicated by OSA after CPAP treatment. However, after correlation analysis, we found that there was no significant correlation between the decrease in CRP and the improvement in PWV, and more patients and longer follow-up are still needed to be included. This time point was further clarified.
Study limitations
There are three main limitations in our study. First, the major limitation of the study was the small sample which limited its power. The limitation of this study is that: 1. the major limitation of the study was the small sample Which limits its power, especially in the CPAP treatment group. Second, The patient's follow-up time is relatively short, only 6 months. Third, Inflammatory factors selected by the research institute may affect the experimental results if patients have potential bacterial infections during sample collection.