Acetazolamide as a Means to Mitigate Falling Ventilatory Drive and Drive-dependent OSA
Status:
Recruiting
Trial end date:
2027-12-31
Target enrollment:
Participant gender:
Summary
Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a highly prevalent disorder that has major consequences for
cardiovascular health, neurocognitive function, risk of traffic accidents, daytime
sleepiness, and quality of life. For years, a "classic" model of OSA has been used to
describe the disorder, which fails to capture it's complexity. Recently, a model for OSA
called drive-dependent OSA was discovered be more prevalent in the OSA population. This
drive-dependent OSA is due to ventilation instability that occurs during respiratory events
however these individuals have spontaneous increases in drive during respiratory events that
stabilize their airway (i.e., via improving upper airway muscle activity) and reduce the risk
of respiratory events in people with OSA. Therefore, by stabilizing the ventilatory drive,
OSA should be treatable. Acetazolamide is a pharmacological ventilatory stimulant and has
been previously shown to reduce OSA severity. As such in this study, the goal is to
demonstrate acetazolamide improves OSA severity in 'drive-dependent' OSA people by improving
drive-related pharyngeal obstructions compared to the 'classic' OSA people.