Nighttime Dying Linked To Sleep Apnea From Brain Cell Loss

Aim to grow old and die peacefully in your sleep? Be careful what you wish for. A new UCLA study suggests that some people die in their sleep because they stop breathing due to a cumulative loss of cells in the brain's breathing command-post. The online edition of Nature Neuroscience reports the findings on Aug. 7. "We wanted to reveal the mechanism behind central sleep apnea, which most commonly affects people after age 65," explained Jack Feldman, principal investigator and Distinguished Professor of Neurobiology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. "Unlike obstructive sleep apnea – in which a person stops breathing when their airway collapses -- central sleep apnea is triggered by something going awry in the brain's breathing center." Feldman's team had earlier pinpointed a brainstem region they dubbed the preBötzinger complex (preBötC) as the command post for generating breathing in mammals, and identified a small group of preBötC neurons responsible for issuing the commands. This time, the researchers studied the role of the preBötC neurons in generating breathing during sleep, and what would happen if these brain cells were destroyed. The scientists injected adult rats with a cell-specific compound to target and kill more than half of the specialized preBötC neurons. Then the team monitored the rats' breathing patterns. After four or five days, the results proved visibly dramatic.