Pharmacologic treatment of obstructive sleep apnea.

From this review it is obvious that no one pharmacologic agent is universally useful in the treatment of OSA. However, as mentioned in the introductory remarks above, the expectation of beneficial results in a heterogenous population of patients with OSA by specific-acting pharmacologic agents may be somewhat irrational. In addition to this problem, studies performed to date are often not controlled and are usually investigations in small numbers of subjects. However, from the data produced it is apparent that OSA precipitated by endocrinologic problems will improve with hormone replacement. Medroxyprogesterone has been shown to be especially useful in patients with an obesity-hypoventilation component to their disease. Protriptyline may also be useful, but its usefulness is impaired by significant adverse effects. Most likely, both medroxyprogesterone and protriptyline would be more tolerable in female OSA patients, but unfortunately, most of the OSA patient groups studied to date have been composed exclusively of male subjects. Therefore, we do not know if these agents would be more effective and better tolerated in female patients with OSA. The roles of ACE inhibitors and buspirone are not yet established. Serotonin-active agents may be useful in some patients with OSA, but the characteristics of responders are not defined for appropriate patient selection. Much work remains ahead to identify effective pharmacologic agents for OSA. Once identified, these agents must be tested in representative patient groups with a double-blind, placebo-controlled study design in multicenter trials to test the value of these agents.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)