Impact of age on breathing and resistive pressure in people with and without sleep apnea

resistive pressure in people with and without sleep apnea. J Appl Physiol 90: 1074–1082, 2001.—We investigated the effect of age on breathing and total pulmonary resistance (RL) during sleep by studying elderly (.65 yr) and young (25–38 yr) people without sleep apnea (EN and YN, respec-tively) matched for body mass index (BMI). To determine the impact of sleep apnea on age-related changes in breathing, we studied elderly and young apneic patients (EA and YA, respectively) matched for apnea and BMI. In all groups (n 5 11), breathing during periods of stable sleep was analyzed to evaluate the intrinsic variability of respiratory control mech-anisms. In the absence of sleep apnea, the variability of the breathing was similar in the elderly and young [mean (6 SD) coefficient of variation (CV) of tidal volume (VT); wake: EN 21.0 6 14.9%, YN 14.7 6 5.5%; sleep: EN 14.0 6 6.0%; YN 11.5 6 6.4%]. In patients with sleep apnea, breathing during stable sleep was more irregular, but there were no age