Grant: Team Grant: Sleep and Circadian Rhythms

Team Mission: Our goal is to discover new knowledge about the causes, consequences, diagnosis, and treatment of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) so that the well-being, health, and safety of patients with this disease can be improved. OSA is a major health problem affecting over 1,000,000 Canadians. The disease is characterized by recurrent asphyxia due to collapse of the upper airway during sleep. This leads to low oxygen levels and recurrent arousal from sleep. OSA can cause disabling symptoms, increase health care utilisation, lead to motor vehicle crashes and injuries, predispose to cardiovascular disease, and lead to premature death. We have assembled a 17-person innovative multidisciplinary research team that will comprehensively investigate the causes and consequences of OSA. This Team will include core sleep researchers, and experts in a number of different fields (e.g., genetics, cardiovascular risk, physiology, inflammation, occupational injuries, dissemination of knowledge). We intend to identify the genetic and anatomic predispositions to disease, identify biochemical markers that might predict important future events (e.g., future heart attacks), and identify disease pathways by studying human and animal models of sleep apnea. We also want to tackle OSA from a larger societal level, and thus the public health consequences (e.g. economic consequences, public safety) will also be a key area of investigation. Eventually, we want to develop new therapies, and clinical guidelines that will improve the care of our patients.