The Role Of Arousal And Respiratory Control Factors In The Pathogenesis Of Obstructive Sleep Apnoea
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$567,924.00
Summary
Sleep apnoea (OSA) is a very common breathing disorder in sleep characterized by repetitive closure of the collapsible portion of the throat with serious effects on sleep quality and health. Basic causes of OSA are still largely unknown. We will investigate waking responses to breathing load and related respiratory control factors that we believe may be fundamental causes of OSA, and potentially explain many features of OSA including worsening in light sleep and with increasing age.
In Search Of Airways Collapse - A Multimodal Device For The Diagnosis Of Obstructive Sleep Apnoea
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$479,786.00
Summary
Using a combination of off-the-shelf and emerging technologies we will develop a multimodal diagnostic device that will identify and characterize the points of airway collapse that occur in patients with obstructive sleep apnoea. Using this multimodal approach will allow sleep clinicians to recommend the best form of therapeutic intervention for each individual patient rather than the current strong reliance on positive pressure facemasks.
Clarifying The Pathogenic Role Of Arousal-hyperventilation In Obstructive And Central Sleep Apnoea: Testing Fundamental Pathophysiological Mechanisms And A Strategic New Treatment
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$414,717.00
Summary
This project is designed to understand the mechanisms underpinning much more stable breathing during deep sleep in obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA). A newly developed analytical technique will be used to examine breathing effort changes across sleep, and interactions with respiratory-induced awakenings in OSA patients. In addition, a new treatment designed to stabilise breathing will be tested and refined towards a new treatment option for OSA and for central sleep apnoea.
Clinical Outcomes, Safety And Incremental Cost Effectiveness Of Multi-level Airway Surgery In Patients With Moderate-severe Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) Who Have Failed Medical Management
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$652,794.00
Summary
Obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) is a serious medical disorder with a high public health cost. OSA can be effectively treated but poor treatment compliance is a major clinical problem. As a consequence many OSA patients remain untreated, with significant implications for their long term health. New effective and safe therapies are needed. We believe that we will demonstrate a relatively straightforward, safe and effective surgical procedure for OSA after primary treatments fail. This will lead to ....Obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) is a serious medical disorder with a high public health cost. OSA can be effectively treated but poor treatment compliance is a major clinical problem. As a consequence many OSA patients remain untreated, with significant implications for their long term health. New effective and safe therapies are needed. We believe that we will demonstrate a relatively straightforward, safe and effective surgical procedure for OSA after primary treatments fail. This will lead to improved patient outcomes.Read moreRead less
The Role Of Arousal And Diaphragm Displacement In The Pathogenesis Of Obstructive Sleep Apnoea
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$410,875.00
Summary
Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) affects 4% of men and causes excessive daytime sleepiness leading to increased accidents, high blood pressure and premature cardiovascular disease e.g. heart attacks and strokes. OSA is characterized by repetitive obstructions of the floppy portion of the throat during sleep with adverse effects on oxygen levels and sleep quality. OSA is strongly associated with obesity and is 2-3 times more common in men than women. How obesity and male gender predispose to OSA is ....Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) affects 4% of men and causes excessive daytime sleepiness leading to increased accidents, high blood pressure and premature cardiovascular disease e.g. heart attacks and strokes. OSA is characterized by repetitive obstructions of the floppy portion of the throat during sleep with adverse effects on oxygen levels and sleep quality. OSA is strongly associated with obesity and is 2-3 times more common in men than women. How obesity and male gender predispose to OSA is not known. We will investigate two factors that we believe are most likely involved in causing and explaining this gender difference in OSA. We will examine if breathing responses with brief awakening are sufficient to promote OSA patterns of breathing in snorers and if they are greater in male than female OSA patients. We have already shown that healthy men have greater breathing response to arousal compared to women. These brief arousals occur hundreds of times a night in OSA patients, and over-breathing on arousal may increase the probability of upper airway obstruction on falling back to sleep. We will also investigate why even healthy men show greater breathing responses compared to women. Men tend to accumulate fat centrally, particularly in the abdomen, whereas in women fat tends to be distributed more to the hips and thighs. This could be very important in OSA because downward pull exerted on the upper airway by the diaphragm is likely to be reduced in people with more abdominal obesity. This mechanisms has not yet been studied in humans. We will therefore investigate if increased forces placed on the diaphragm during sleep make the upper airway more prone to collapse. We will also investigate these effects during sleep onset, when there may well be important changes in diaphragm position as muscles relax.Read moreRead less
Hypoxia-induced Suppression Of Respiratory Sensations And Reflexes
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$276,750.00
Summary
Many diseases that effect the respiratory system have their primary effect on the lungs and airway themselves but in some conditions, such as obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and asthma, increased breathing load can induce periods of low blood oxygen which could further contribute to morbidity in these diseases. OSA is a disorder associated with snoring. Patients experience periods of sleep fragmentation and oxygen deprivation due to obstruction of the floppy portion of the upper airway (pharynx) d ....Many diseases that effect the respiratory system have their primary effect on the lungs and airway themselves but in some conditions, such as obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and asthma, increased breathing load can induce periods of low blood oxygen which could further contribute to morbidity in these diseases. OSA is a disorder associated with snoring. Patients experience periods of sleep fragmentation and oxygen deprivation due to obstruction of the floppy portion of the upper airway (pharynx) during sleep. It affects 4% of men and 2% of women and causes excessive daytime sleepiness leading to increased risk of accidents, high blood pressure and premature cardiovascular disease. Asthma produces airway inflamation and narrowing and affects a wide range of people. Both OSA and asthma are associated with episodes of impaired breathing and reduced levels of oxygen in the blood. Low levels of oxygen in the blood (hypoxia) is well known to impair functioning of the central nervous system. We have recently found that hypoxia blunts sensations of increased breathing load in healthy people and in asthmatics. Hypoxia might therefore contribute to worsening of attacks in these diseases. This study aims to investigate how changes in blood oxygen levels affect brain processing of respiratory signals, how this translates to perception of sensations and the physiological adaptations that people make to cope with increased breathing load. We will also investigate whether the inhibitory effects of hypoxia on central nervous system function extend to other vital protective respiratory reflexes such as cough, awakening from sleep to increased breathing load and upper airway reflexes that are important for maintaining an open airway.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE120101161
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$375,000.00
Summary
Compressive sensing based probabilistic graphical models (PGM). The aim of the project is to develop fast, large scale probabilistic graphical models (PGM) learning and inference methods. The resulting system will be able to process large scale PGMs on a standard PC, and will be easily extendable to computer clustering for larger scale PGMs requiring higher precision.
Efficient causal discovery from observational data. Discovering cause-effect relationships is the ultimate goal for many applications. Randomised control trial is the gold standard for discovering causal relationships. However, conducting such trials is impossible in many cases due to cost and/or ethical concerns. In contrast, a large amount of data has been accumulated in all areas. It is desirable to infer causal relationships from data directly and automatically. This project aims to develop ....Efficient causal discovery from observational data. Discovering cause-effect relationships is the ultimate goal for many applications. Randomised control trial is the gold standard for discovering causal relationships. However, conducting such trials is impossible in many cases due to cost and/or ethical concerns. In contrast, a large amount of data has been accumulated in all areas. It is desirable to infer causal relationships from data directly and automatically. This project aims to develop fast and scalable data mining methods for identifying causal relationships from large and/or high dimensional data sets. The developed methods will mainly be evaluated in real world biological applications. The research outcomes will be useful in many areas for causal reasoning and decision making.Read moreRead less
Fairness aware data mining for discrimination free decision-making. This project aims to develop data mining methods to detect algorithmic discriminations and to build fair decision models. It expects to provide techniques for regulatory organisations to detect discriminations in algorithmic decisions, and for various companies and organisations to build fair decision systems. Expected outcomes are novel and accurate methods for discrimination detection, practical and versatile techniques for fa ....Fairness aware data mining for discrimination free decision-making. This project aims to develop data mining methods to detect algorithmic discriminations and to build fair decision models. It expects to provide techniques for regulatory organisations to detect discriminations in algorithmic decisions, and for various companies and organisations to build fair decision systems. Expected outcomes are novel and accurate methods for discrimination detection, practical and versatile techniques for fair decision model building, and improved understanding of the relationships between privacy preservation and discrimination prevention to enable new techniques to achieve both goals. The developed techniques enable society to tackle ethical challenges in the big data era where many decisions are analytics based. Read moreRead less
Developing novel data mining methods to reveal complex group relationships from heterogeneous data. This project aims to develop novel and effective data mining methods that will enable us to unravel the relationships between multiple, rather than individual, components of complex systems (such as genes, gene regulators and cancer), which is crucial to understanding how such systems work. Potential applications for such methods are extensive.