Researchers have found that posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms improved in veterans with obstructive sleep apnea who were treated with continuous positive airway pressure, reports Psychiatry Advisor.
“The findings indicated that treatment of OSA reduced PTSD severity and diminished frequency of nightmares to a degree that was both reliable and statistically significant,” the investigators wrote.
The researchers noted that prior research speculated that PTSD may be caused in part by an underlying REM sleep dysfunction that is amplified by OSA.
