Sweet dreams: HRT ‘may help women put their snoring to bed’

WOMEN who take HRT to combat menopause symptoms could find it helps with their snoring too.

One in 20 post-menopausal women suffer from obstructive sleep apnoea – a condition where their airway relaxes and narrows which can cause loud snoring and wake them up as many as 40 times a night.

Now a study suggests sleep apnoea is more common in post- menopausal women because they have lower levels of the hormones oestrogen and progesterone.

These are replaced when women have HRT, raising hopes it could help with their sleeping issues.

The research comes at a time when tens of thousands of women for whom HRT is a lifeline are struggling to get hold of the medication because of supply shortages.

The Daily Mail’s HRT campaign secured a major victory last month after pharmacists were given the go-ahead to prescribe alternatives to outof-stock treatment.

In the snoring study, researchers looked at 774 women who were given a questionnaire to determine if they were likely to have obstructive sleep apnoea.

To fit the criteria, they needed to snore, and frequently have had either irregular breathing, gasping or snores which disturbed others in the previous 12 months.

Blood tests showed if women were able to double the amount of a type of oestrogen called oestrone in their body, they would be 19 per cent less likely to have suspected obstructive sleep apnoea.

If they could double their amount of progesterone, they would be 9 per cent less likely to have the condition.

This was the case even taking into account factors such as the women’s weight and whether they smoked.

More research is needed to clearly determine if HRT could reduce the risk of the condition. But Dr Kai Triebner, senior author of the study, from the University of Bergen, said: ‘This study is exciting because it suggests HRT could be a solution to women suffering from snoring and sleep apnoea because of the menopause.

‘ It is important because sleep apnoea is linked to serious conditions like heart disease and stroke. We already know that HRT can improve temporary symptoms of the menopause like hot flushes and night sweats... now it could potentially help many women having a very hard time snoring and struggling for breath at night.’

The study, published in the journal PLOS One, looked at women aged 40 to 67 from seven different countries who were involved in a European health survey.

Among the 774 post-menopausal women, almost three-quarters, or 551 of them, were snorers.

Experts suggest post-menopausal women are two to three times as likely as those who have yet to undergo the change to have sleep apnoea.

The 551 women were asked three additional questions to judge if they might have obstructive sleep apnoea.

These included if they always or frequently woke up struggling to breathe, if they breathed irregularly while sleeping and if they were told they always or frequently snored so loudly they disturbed others.

The researchers suggest a drop in hormones after the menopause could cause women to gain fat in certain parts of the body, which can increase the risk of sleep apnoea, with fat deposits in the throat narrowing their airways.

Erla Siguroardottir, lead author of the study from the University of Iceland, said: ‘Higher female sex hormones were linked in this study with a lower likelihood of reporting symptoms of sleep apnoea.

‘More research is needed to understand this and whether HRT after menopause could reduce symptoms of this worrying condition.’

‘Worrying condition’