Experts Say More Research Needed on Link Between Heart Disease and Sleep Apnea

Newswise — The American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology release next week a scientific statement on the need for more research for the connection between heart disease and sleep apnea. This story is embargoed until 2 p.m. EDT/1 p.m. CDT on Monday, July 28, 2008. The statement will be published online in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association and the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Virend Somers, M.D., Ph.D., a cardiologist at Mayo Clinic, is the chair of the joint statement writing committee for a joint statement from the AHA and the ACC saying that medical researchers need to undertake large-scale studies to determine the exact relationship between heart disease and the different forms of sleep apnea.

Please see Mayo Clinic's News Blog at http://newsblog.mayoclinic.org/2008/07/23/sleep-apnea-and-heart-disease-risk/ for the full news release and for audio and video files of Dr. Somers. The password for journalists, until the embargo lifts, is a8793b.

The audio and video files are provided so you may see and hear Dr. Virend Somers in advance of the embargo - and with the understanding that they will not be distributed until that time. You also may download and edit these assets and incorporate them in your on-line or radio stories, loading them into your site's video player.

The YouTube links will be made public when the embargo expires, so you may embed those in your on-line story instead of loading the video files into your sites' player.