Skin patch for diagnosing sleep apnoea 'effective'

8th June 2017 – A small disposable skin patch can detect obstructive sleep apnoea with almost the same accuracy as the standard more cumbersome diagnostic equipment, preliminary trial results show.

Obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) is a relatively common condition in which normal breathing is interrupted during sleep when the walls of the throat relax and narrow. People with the condition usually wake frequently during the night and may feel exhausted during the day.

Men are more at risk of OSA than women.

Diagnosing sleep apnoea

The condition can be diagnosed either at a sleep centre or at home.

Sleep centres use a test known as a polysomnography which can measure brain waves, muscle tone, airflow through mouth and nose, heart rate and oxygen levels.

Many of these factors can be assessed in your home using portable recording equipment.

However, home sleep recording devices can be difficult to use and may interfere with sleep.

Results of a study into the effectiveness of a small skin patch, the SomnaPatch, made by Somnarus Inc, have been presented at Sleep 2017, the 31st Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies.

Comfort and ease of use

In an interview with Medscape Medical News, Maria Merchant, the company's CEO, notes that current home sleep monitors are "cumbersome and have multiple wires that need to be connected". The SomnaPatch sleep monitor "utilises the trends in miniaturisation technologies and also wearable devices and is very comfortable for patients and easy to use," she explains.

The patch weighs less than 1 ounce (28 g) and records nasal pressure, blood oxygen saturation, pulse rate, respiratory effort, sleep time and body position.

Results show that the total rate of clinical agreement between the patch and standard sleep lab polysomnography was 87.4%.

The study involved 174 people whose sleep was simultaneously measured using polysomnography and the patch.

'Favourable accuracy levels'

Overall, the accuracy of the patch compared "very favourably", Maria Merchant says. "We met all the guidelines for portable sleep monitors and exceeded some of them."

In an additional home usability study, 38 out of 39 users were successful in activating the diagnostic patch and collecting at least 4 hours of sleep data.

Dr Nitun Verma, spokesperson for the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, tells Medscape Medical News: "Most people with apnoea never get diagnosed and treated, so any validated way of helping reduce this gap is important."

The findings of the study should be treated with caution at this stage as they have yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal.