BACKGROUND: The relationship between obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and depressive symptoms is ambiguous in the literature. PURPOSE: To investigate if there is a correlation between depressive symptoms and the severity of OSA. METHOD: A retrospective, cross-sectional study of data from 123 consecutive adults patients with neither mental illness nor psychotropic drugs intake, referred to a sleep laboratory for an evaluation of OSA. For the statistical analysis (uni- and multivariate), we used the following variables: gender and age, as well as scores based on several scales and indexes such as Beck Depressive Inventory (BDI), Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS), Body Mass Index (BMI) and Apnea-Hypopnea Index (AHI). RESULTS: Univariate analysis found a weak but statistically significant negative correlation between BDI and AHI. However, with the multivariate logistic regression analysis model, the inverse relation between AHI and BDI no longer has statistical significance. CONCLUSION: There is no causal relationship between OSA and depressive symptoms in the population studied.
obstructive sleep apnea; depressive symptoms; Beck depressive inventory; apnea and hypopnea index
