An old pharmaceutical product may be a new treatment for obstructive sleep apnea, according to new research presented today by University of Illinois at Chicago and Northwestern University scientists at the SLEEP 2017 annual meeting in Boston.
David Carley, professor of biobehavioral health sciences, medicine and bioengineering at UIC; Phyllis Zee, professor of neurology at Northwestern University; and their colleagues have discovered that dronabinol, approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration more than 25 years ago to treat nausea and vomiting in chemotherapy patients, can help people who suffer from sleep apnea.
"At the present time there are no approved drug treatments for sleep apnea, and there remains an important unmet need for fully effective and acceptable treatments of the disorder," said Carley.
