‘Dying in sleep’ linked to sleep apnea – study  August 8, 2005
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – People who die in their sleep may stop
breathing because they have lost too many brain cells, U.S.
researchers reported on Monday.  Sleep apnea — a condition in
which people stop breathing for long stretches of time in their
sleep — may sometimes be caused by the destruction of cells in
the brain stem, where autonomic functions such as breathing are
controlled, they  Tests on rats showed that the loss of key
brain stem cells that die off with age caused such disrupted
sleep that the animals eventually stopped breathing completely.
The same thing may be happening in elderly people, said
neurobiologist Jack Feldman of the University of California Los
“We wanted to reveal the mechanism behind central sleep apnea,
which most commonly affects people after age 65,” Feldman said
in a statement.  “Unlike obstructive sleep apnea, in which a
person stops breathing when their airway collapses, central
sleep apnea is triggered by som