Health outcome · disease
Sleep apnoea
Part of: Respiratory tract diseases
Also: sleep apnea, obstructive sleep apnoea, OSA, sleep-disordered breathing
Repeated interruption of breathing during sleep, most often because the upper airway collapses. It is diagnosed by counting events per hour of sleep, and it belongs here because the airway that collapses is also the airway that indoor air inflames.
Not reviewed by a clinician. This entry describes a disease or a symptom. We are introducing clinical review for pages of this kind; until that reviewer is in place, this page has been written and checked by the Coridum team but not reviewed by a clinician. It is general information and not medical advice. How this library is built is described in How we build this library.
Why it matters indoors
The mechanism proposed is anatomical rather than systemic. A narrowed or inflamed upper airway collapses more readily during sleep, so anything that produces nasal congestion or pharyngeal inflammation should worsen the condition — which puts allergic rhinitis, irritant exposure and tobacco smoke in the same causal frame, and makes the bedroom the room that matters.
The evidence is thinner than for other respiratory outcomes and comes mostly from studies of outdoor pollution at the residential address, with few measurements made in the bedrooms themselves.
Two cautions are needed for any result. Obesity dominates the risk of this condition to a degree that leaves little room for other factors unless it has been fully accounted for; and the diagnosis requires a sleep study, so results based on self-reported snoring or daytime sleepiness describe a symptom rather than the condition, which the caveat records.
Indoor factors with evidence
| Factor | Effect | Population | Study design | Source | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) | OR 1.23 (0.61–2.47) | children · dwelling | study of children from predominantly low-income urban households: indoor NO2 measured and gas cooking stove use recorded, sleep measured by actigraphy and sleep-disordered breathing assessed, logistic regression adjusted for demographic and socioeconomic factors and season | F-0680 The associations between gas cooking stoves, indoor NO 2 con… (2026) | machine |
Each row is one Finding — a sentence as printed in one study, recorded with its page in the Coridum Knowledge Base. Follow the Finding number for the exact wording and the citation. Checked says who verified the row: machine means every automatic check passed and the surrounding text was read; person means someone read the sentence in the document. Rows are re-checked by a person over time. The studies are curated in the Coridum Knowledge Base; the reading of them together is a Claim, shown separately.
Identifiers
- MeSH
- D012891
Cite this page
Coridum Research. Sleep apnoea. Coridum Knowledge G-0198, 16 September 2026. https://coridum.com/k/G-0198/