Abstract
The aim of the present study was to compare the prevalence of sleep-disordered breathing among Hispanic and white Americans and Japanese.
A 1-night sleep study using a single-channel airflow monitor was performed on 211 Hispanics and 246 Whites from the Minnesota field centre (St Paul, MN, USA) of the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA), and 978 Japanese from three community-based cohorts of the Circulatory Risk in Communities Study (CIRCS) in Japan. The respiratory disturbance index and sleep-disordered breathing, defined as a respiratory disturbance index of ≥15 events·h−1, were estimated.
The prevalence of sleep-disordered breathing was higher in males (34.2%) than females (14.7%), and among Hispanics (36.5%) and Whites (33.3%) than among Japanese (18.4%), corresponding to differences in body mass index. Within body mass index strata, the race difference in sleep-disordered breathing was attenuated. This was also true when body mass index was adjusted for instead of stratification. The strong association between body mass index and sleep-disordered breathing was similar in Japanese and Americans.
The prevalence of sleep-disordered breathing was lower among Japanese than among Americans. However, the association of body mass index with sleep-disordered breathing was strong, and similar among the race/ethnic groups studied. The majority of the race/ethnic difference in sleep-disordered breathing prevalence was explained by a difference in body mass index distribution.
Footnotes
Support Statement
The Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA) was funded by National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (Bethesda, MD, USA) grant (contracts N01-HC-95159 to N01-HC-95165 and N01-HC–95169). The Circulatory Risk in Communities Study (CIRCS) was partly funded by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (17659184, 18390194 and 18659179) from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (Tokyo, Japan). This ancillary study was also supported by the Pfizer Health Research Foundation (Tokyo, Japan), the Osaka Medical Research Foundation for Incurable Diseases (Osaka, Japan), the Japan Cardiovascular Research Foundation (Suita, Japan) and the ResMed Foundation (La Jolla, CA, USA).
Statement of Interest
A statement of interest for this study can be found at www.erj.ersjournals.com/misc/statements.dtl
- Received July 25, 2009.
- Accepted January 18, 2010.
- ©ERS 2010