A New Window to the Brain: Exosomes as a Promising Approach to Understand Mechanisms of Cognitive Deficits Associated With Obstructive Sleep Apnea

Affecting nearly 1 billion individuals worldwide, obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a common, underdiagnosed, undertreated sleep disorder where airway collapse leads to intermittent hypoxic events while asleep (1). OSA is an independent risk factor for cognitive impairment, cognitive decline, and dementia. Studies have found consistent impairments in immediate recall, delayed recall, verbal and motor learning, attention, episodic memory, and executive functioning (2-4). Several studies have shown that the gold standard treatment for OSA, continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP), can improve cognitive domains including processing speed (5), vigilance (6,7), attention (8), and executive functioning (8); though improvements are not universal (9-11).