Obstructive sleep apnea is a disorder characterized by continuous interruptions of breathing during sleep. A disorder that suffers about 6% of the world population and that, far from being limited to a worsening of the quality of rest of those affected, is associated with an increased risk of diseases, in the case of cardiovascular diseases -among others, hypertension arterial pressure, myocardial infarction and stroke.

Seep apnea is also associated with an increased risk of cancer and, once the disease has appeared, with a worse evolution of the tumor. An association whose mechanism has been described for the first time in a study carried out by researchers from the Hospital Clínic of Barcelona and presented at the XXXI Annual Congress of the European Association of Urology which is being held in Munich (Germany) .

As Antoni Vilaseca, director of the study explains, «patients suffering from obstructive sleep apnea have intermittent hypoxia during the night. And our results show that this intermittent hypoxia has the potential to promote the formation of new blood vessels in tumors, which means that these tumors have access to more nutrients".