[Relationship between diabetes mellitus-associated obstructive sleep apnea syndrome and hyperinsulinemia]

The purpose of this study was to examine the prevalence of sleep disordered breathing and background factors, especially hyperinsulinemia, in diabetic patients. The subjects were 70 patients randomly selected from 143 noninsulin-dependent diabetic patients hospitalized for educational purposes. Obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS) was diagnosed in 13 subjects, equivalent to a prevalence of 18.6%. The mean +/- S.D. immunoreactive insulin (IRI) values for 11 of the 13 OSAS patients (excluding insulin-treated patients) and for 49 non-OSAS patients were 10.7 +/- 6.8 microU/ml and 5.8 +/- 3.5 microU/ml, respectively. The value for the OSAS group was higher than that for the non-OSAS group (p = 0.04). However, a positive correlation between body mass index (BMI) and IRI was observed in both the OSAS (Y = 1.148 X - 20.006, r = 0.834, p = 0.001) and non-OSAS (Y = 0.466 X - 5.820, r = 0.524, p = 0.0001) groups. Multivariate analysis demonstrated that the presence of OSAS had a statistically significant influence on IRI (p = 0.001), but not on BMI (p = 0.391). These findings suggest that hyperinsulinemia may be exacerbated in diabetic patients with OSAS regardless of BMI.