Purpose of review: Sympathetic activity varies continuously across sleep stages. During rapid eye movement sleep, sympathetic tone increases substantially but is highly variable. Microarousals are associated with momentary bursts of sympathetic activity. Abnormal respiratory events progressively elevate sympathetic activity in proportion to the severity of oxyhemoglobin desaturation. These phenomena imply that cardiovascular markers of sympathetic activity such as peripheral arterial tone (PAT) and pulse transit time could be indirect tools for diagnosing sleep disordered breathing and characterizing sleep structure and fragmentation.
Recent findings: Measurement of variations in PAT coupled with pulse rate accelerations and desaturations in oximetry can be used to diagnose sleep apnea. Good agreement between both manually and automatically analyzed PAT recordings and polysomnography has been demonstrated during in-laboratory or at-home studies. Numerous validation studies against esophageal pressure have demonstrated that pulse transit time is the best noninvasive method for measurement of respiratory effort. Pulse transit time and PAT are sensitive techniques for arousal recognition, particularly in children and infants. There are specific sleep stage-dependent PAT patterns that allow for the recognition of rapid eye movement sleep and, in the case of nonrapid eye movement sleep, the separation of lighter stages from deeper, slow wave sleep. Elevated nocturnal sympathetic activity as documented by PAT attenuations is linked with chronically elevated blood pressure in humans.
Summary: Cardiovascular markers of autonomic control during sleep permit not only the diagnosis of obstructive sleep apnea and estimation of sleep structure but are also linked with the prevalence of daytime hypertension.