Signal detection of drugs associated with obstructive and central sleep apnoea

We aim to discover new safety signals of drug-induced sleep apnoea (SA), a global health problem affecting approximately 1 billion people worldwide.

We first conducted a series of sequence symmetry analyses (SSA) in a cohort composed from all patients who received a first SA diagnosis or treatment between 2006 and 2018 in the Echantillon Généraliste des Bénéficaires (EGB), a random sample of the French healthcare database. We used two primary outcomes to estimate the sequence ratio (SR) for all drug classes available in France: a sensitive one (diagnosis or treatment of SA) and a specific one (Positive Airway Pressure (PAP) therapy). We then performed disproportionality analyses using the “Bayesian neural network method” on all cases of sleep apnoea (MedDRA high level term) reported up to November 2023 in the World Health Organisation (WHO) pharmacovigilance database.

Among the 728,167 individuals, 46,193 had an incident diagnosis or treatment for SA and 17,080 had started an incident treatment by PAP therapy. Fifty-eight drug classes had a significant SR, with 7 considered highly plausible: opium alkaloids and derivatives, benzodiazepine derivatives, other centrally acting agents, other anxiolytics, carbamic acid esters, quinine and derivatives and antivertigo preparations; with consistent signals found for the first 3 drug classes in the disproportionality analysis.

In this signal detection study, we found that opioids, benzodiazepines (but not Z-drugs) and myorelaxing agents are associated with the onset or aggravation of SA. Moreover, a new safety signal for antivertigo preparations such as betahistine emerged and needs to be further explored.