{"doi":"10.2147/nss.s282869","title":"Patients with Obstructive Sleep Apnea Have Altered Levels of Four Cytokines Associated with Cardiovascular and Kidney Disease, but Near Normal Levels with Airways Therapy","abstract":"Introduction: Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) results in chronic intermittent hypoxia leading to systemic inflammation, increases in pro-inflammatory cytokines TNF-Alpha and IL-6, and increased risk for a number of life threatening medical disorders such as cardiovascular and kidney disease. Methods: A BioPlex Array was used to examined the serum levels of four cytokines also expressed in endothelial cells and/or macrophages and associated with cardiovascular and kidney disease risk. Results: Relative to untreated OSA patients, airways treated OSA patients had a 5.4-fold higher median level of MMP2 (p = 9.1x10 − 11 ), a 1.4-fold higher level of TWEAK (p = 1.8x10 − 7 ), a 1.7-fold higher level of CD163 (p = 1.4x10 − 6 ), but a 2.0-fold lower level of MMP3 (p = 7.9x10 − 7 ). Airway treatment resulted in levels more similar to or indistinguishable from control subjects. Both t-SNE or UMAP analysis of the global structure of these multi-dimensional data revealed two data clusters, one populated primarily with data for controls and most airways treated OSA patients and a second populated primarily with data for OSA patients. Discussion: We discuss a concept in which the aberrant levels of these cytokines in untreated OSA patients may represent a chronic response after years of experiencing intermittent nightly hypoxia, which attenuated the acute response to hypoxia. A balanced therapeutic correction of the aberrant levels of these cytokines may limit the progression of CVD and kidney disease in OSA patients. Keywords: CPAP, OSA, atherosclerosis, cytokines, renal disease, apnea","journal":"Nature and Science of Sleep","year":2021,"id":188288,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":16,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9561,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":432415,"name":"Richard B. Meagher","orcid":"0000-0003-3928-8403","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":432416,"name":"Suresh Ambati","orcid":"0000-0002-4658-0245","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":748741,"name":"Huimin Cheng","orcid":"0000-0002-3573-654X","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":331413,"name":"Ping Ma","orcid":"0000-0002-5728-3596","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":433270,"name":"Bradley G. Phillips","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":531731,"name":"Ye Wang","orcid":"0000-0002-0123-1260","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":63,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:49:05.976005Z","pmid":"33790678","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}