Sleep Apnoea and Early Antecedents of Adult Disease

Obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) is a highly prevalent disorder across the life spectrum including early childhood and pregnancy. Occurrence of sleep perturbations and intermittent hypoxia that constitute major hallmarks of OSA during these favourable developmental plasticity windows may facilitate emergence of incremental risks for a variety of ageing-related disorders via a multitude of epigenetic mechanisms. In addition, OSA during late adolescence and adulthood is not immune to epigenetic changes, the latter potentially playing a role in the reversibility of OSA-associated morbidities upon implementation of therapy. Furthermore, unique epigenetic signatures may provide powerful biomarkers for precision-based medicine approaches in the framework of OSA. Taken together, the conceptual umbrellas assigning major roles to epigenetics in the context of OSA-associated phenotypic expression and longitudinal disease risk trajectories is not a farfetched idea any longer. Early adoption of these biologically relevant principles and their implementation to the upcoming future clinical trials appears inevitable if progress is to occur.