Effect of Three Alcohol Doses on Breathing during Sleep in 30–49 Year Old Nonobese Snorers and Nonsnorers

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
To test the effect of alcohol ingestion and snoring on sleep-disordered breathing (SDB), the sleep and respiration of 31 nonobese healthy males ages 30-49 (15 snorers, 6 nonsnorers) were studied overnight after alochol ingestion. Subjects received placebo, 0.32, 0.65, and 0.81 g alcohol/kg body weight prior to their evening bedtime, with each dose given on one of four nonconsecutive nights in a repeated-measures counterbalanced design. On each night, respiration was assessed by recording respiratory effort from intercostal surface electromyography (EMG), ventilation from oral and nasal thermistors, and arterial oxygen saturation (SaO2) from an ear oximeter (BIOX III). Snores had significantly: (a) more total SDB, (b) more obstructive sleep apea (OSA), and (c) lower minimum SaO2 than nonsnorers after the placebo and each alcohol dose. Snorers had more hypoxic events than nonsnorers after each alcohol dose but not after placebo. Increasing alcohol dose caused a statistically significant (p = 0.0004) decreases in minimum SaO2 in snorers only, but this decrease was small and probably not clinically important. Alcohol did not cause significant increases in SDB and hypoxic for snorers versus nonsnorers. Because this experiment included only nonobese 30- to 49-year-old males, these results do not imply that alcohol has no significant effects on obese subjects or those older than 50.