You are here

  • Home
  • Archive
  • Volume 6, Issue 11
  • Risk of obstructive sleep apnoea in patients with rheumatoid arthritis: a nationwide population-based retrospective cohort study

Article Text

Article menu

Download PDFPDF

XML
Epidemiology
Research
Risk of obstructive sleep apnoea in patients with rheumatoid arthritis: a nationwide population-based retrospective cohort study
  1. Te-Chun Shen1,2,3,
  2. Liang-Wen Hang2,4,
  3. Shinn-Jye Liang2,4,
  4. Chien-Chung Huang1,5,
  5. Cheng-Li Lin6,
  6. Chih-Yen Tu2,
  7. Te-Chun Hsia2,
  8. Chuen-Ming Shih2,
  9. Wu-Huei Hsu2,
  10. Fung-Chang Sung6,7,8
  1. 1Graduate Institute of Clinical Medicine Science, College of Medicine, China Medical University, Taichung, Taiwan
  2. 2Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, China Medical University Hospital, Taichung, Taiwan
  3. 3Intensive Care Unit, Chu Shang Show Chwan Hospital, Nantau, Taiwan
  4. 4Sleep Medical Center, China Medical University Hospital, Taichung, Taiwan
  5. 5Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Immunology and Rheumatology, China Medical University Hospital, Taichung, Taiwan
  6. 6Management Office for Health Data, China Medical University Hospital, Taichung, Taiwan
  7. 7Department of Health Services Administration, China Medical University, Taichung, Taiwan
  8. 8College of Public Health, Kunming Medical University, Kunming, YuanNan, China
  1. Correspondence to Professor Fung-Chang Sung; fcsung.tw{at}gmail.com

Abstract

Objective Sleep disorders are prevalent medical disorders in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). However, whether patients with RA are at an increased risk of developing obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) is unclear.

Design Using population-based retrospective cohort study to examine the risk of OSA in patients with RA.

Setting We used claims data of the National Health Insurance Research Database (NHIRD) of Taiwan.

Participants We identified a RA cohort with 33 418 patients newly diagnosed in 2000–2010 and a randomly selected non-RA comparison cohort with 33 418 individuals frequency matched by sex, age and diagnosis year.

Primary and secondary outcome measures Incident OSA was estimated by the end of 2011. The HRs of OSA were calculated using the Cox proportional hazards regression analysis.

Results The overall incidence rate of OSA was 75% greater in the RA cohort than in the non-RA cohort (3.04 vs 1.73/10 000 person-years, p<0.001), with an adjusted HR (aHR) of 1.75 (95% CI 1.18 to 2.60). Stratified analyses by sex, age group and comorbidity revealed that the incidence rates of OSA associated with RA were higher in all subgroups.

Conclusions This population-based retrospective cohort study suggested that patients with RA should be monitored for the risk of developing OSA.

  • EPIDEMIOLOGY
  • RHEUMATOLOGY
  • RESPIRATORY MEDICINE (see Thoracic Medicine)

This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2016-013151

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • L-WH and F-CS contributed equally.

    • Contributors T-CS, L-WH, S-JL and C-CH conceived and designed the study. C-YT, T-CH, C-MS and W-HH provided administrative support. T-CS, L-WH, C-LL and F-CS analysed and interpreted the data. T-CS, L-WH, C-LL and F-CS contributed by writing the manuscript. All authors were involved in collection and assembly of data. All authors approved the final version of the manuscript to be published.

    • Funding This study is supported in part by Taiwan Ministry of Health and Welfare Clinical Trial and Research Center of Excellence (MOHW105-TDU-B-212-133019); Academia Sinica Taiwan Biobank, Stroke Biosignature Project (BM10501010037); NRPB Stroke Clinical Trial Consortium (MOST 105-2325-B-039-003); Tseng-Lien Lin Foundation, Taichung, Taiwan; Taiwan Brain Disease Foundation, Taipei, Taiwan; Katsuzo and Kiyo Aoshima Memorial Funds, Japan; China Medical University Hospital; CMU under the Aim for Top University Plan of the Ministry of Education, Taiwan. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. No additional external funding received for this study.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Ethics approval This study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee at the China Medical University and Hospital (CMUH-104-REC2-115).

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Data sharing statement No additional data are available.