The present study investigated the extent of AD-like neuropathology in autopsy tissue from the hippocampus and brain-stems of 34 Icelandic people with clinically verified OSA. Our results show that increased OSA severity tends to be associated with an increased Aβ burden, but not an increased NFT burden in the hippocampus. While there was an association between NFT stage and OSA severity, the relationship did not withstand controlling for age, and age was found to be the only significant predictor of NFT burden. CPAP use did not affect these relationships. No evidence of an association was found in the brainstem. APOE genotypes were distributed as expected for the general population and are not likely to have affected the results. These findings add to our previous findings of reduced hippocampal volume and demyelination associated with increasing OSA severity in the same brain samples.
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