A weight-loss intervention for patients with obstructive sleep apnoea
Research type
Research Study
Full title
A feasibility study on the inclusion of a remote behavioural weight-loss intervention to the treatment pathway of patients with obstructive sleep apnoea
IRAS ID
245972
Contact name
Matthew Jones
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Bangor University
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 3 months, 0 days
Research summary
Obesity is a growing problem for population’s health in industrialized societies. The risks for getting certain diseases relate to obesity, like cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancers. However, some less know diseases are strongly associated with obesity: Obstructive Sleep Apnoea (OSA) is a sleep-related breathing disorder, where affected people stop breathing and wake-up multiple times during the night due to the inability of the upper airways to remain open. The most commonly reported symptom of OSA is excessive daytime sleepiness of which has significant consequences for the patient’s quality of life, social functioning, performance at work, and their participation in activities of daily living (Engleman & Douglas, 2004). OSA has also an independent risk for cardiovascular disease. Recently, it has been shown that weight loss can have substantial beneficial effect on OSA symptoms in patients (Tuomilehto et al. 2009).
We have recently developed a remote behavioural weight-loss programme (Alshubrami et al. 2017); the programme has been used in patients from an obesity clinic and induced moderate weight loss. Remote interventions are important due to the reduced professional interaction needed and consequently lower costs involved. This research will attempt to induce clinically significant weight loss (>4% body mass) in OSA patients over 3 months period and will assess sleep quality. Participants will be seen monthly for weight, neck, waist and hip circumference, and body composition measurements. Participants will also be required to fill in several questionnaires during their visits, a health questionnaire for pre-screening asking about possible diseases or medications taken which might exclude participation, quality of sleep questionnaires, a food cravings questionnaire, and explicit attitude towards healthy food questionnaire asking about how healthy and unhealthy food is perceived.
We expect to find associations between improvements of sleep quality and weight loss, as well as clinically meaningful weight loss and sleep improvements.REC name
West of Scotland REC 5
REC reference
18/WS/0113
Date of REC Opinion
10 Jul 2018
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion