Impact of Sleep-Disordered Breathing Management in Systemic Hypertension Control: METASLEEP Project

Hypertension is a frequent condition affecting 11M Spanish citizens and is the leading modifiable contributor to cardiovascular disease and death. Our society has already identified balanced diet, physical activity and emotional wellbeing as the 3 pillars of healthy living. Healthy sleep should be incorporated as the fourth pillar, as clearly supported by the extensively available scientific evidence. Targeting sleep is considered the new frontier in cardiovascular prevention. In fact, recent scientific evidence encourages consideration of including sleep disturbances in the top 10 potentially modifiable cardiovascular risk factors. Sleep-disordered breathing affect 30-80% of patients with hypertension. The personalized management of hypertension is challenging due to; i) the misclassification of hypertensive patients (affecting 1 out of 3 patients); ii) the lack of adequate treatment of high mortality risk hypertensive phenotypes today is an unmet clinical need; iii) unawareness of the impact of sleep-disordered breathing as a modifiable risk factor for hypertension. Importantly, the investigators already made the seminal observations showing that the treatment for sleep-disordered breathing reduces blood pressure in the hypertensive phenotypes with the highest mortality risk. Given the need for novel strategies to treat hypertension and, supported by our data, the investigators propose to study and treat sleep-disordered breathing to improve hypertension control. METASLEEP will go beyond current state-of the-art providing a new paradigm for the accurate hypertension classification and treatment. This project will open up a new avenue on the therapeutic potential of the management of sleep-disordered breathing in hypertension.