Grant: Project Grant

Approximately one in four Canadians is affected by significant sleep problems that can diminish their health, alertness, safety and quality of life. The most common and serious of the sleep disorders have impaired breathing as their root cause. One example is sleep apnea, which affects up to 20% of adults and is also thought to be involved in some cases of sudden unexplained death in infancy. Sleep apnea is defined as cessation of breathing during sleep and is typically caused by closure of the air passage in the throat in sleep due to relaxation of those breathing muscles (e.g., the tongue) whose activity normally keeps this air passage open. Episodes of breathing cessation in sleep can occur hundreds of times per night, each resulting in temporary suffocation that causes major sleep disruption. Understanding the brain mechanisms causing sleep apnea and other breathing disorders in sleep is important because of the adverse medical, societal and economic costs of this common disorder, such as increased strokes, angina and heart attacks, debilitating daytime sleepiness, increased traffic and work-related accidents, impaired work performance and decreased quality of life. Our research identifies the brain mechanisms that suppress breathing in sleep and the crucial waking up responses to respiratory distress. This fundamental research is of high clinical relevance. For example, others have manipulated (with success) the mechanisms we first identified as pharmacotherapy for sleep apnea. We will assess, progress and drive new treatment strategies from the basic mechanisms identified from this new research. Identifying the key mechanisms underpinning sleep and breathing, and identifying targets and strategies to reactivate or reinstate breathing when it is depressed or fails, constitute new knowledge of high translational, clinical and societal impact.