Medical milestone: First drug for sleep apnea (2025)

Obstructive sleep apnea or OSA affects nearly a billion people across the globe.

It robs people of their sleep — they stop breathing sometimes 20 to 50 to 100 times a night and are abruptly awakened.

Not only do people wake up tired and groggy, but it can also lead to serious health problems, including heart disease, stroke and cognitive decline.

It’s mostly treated by wearing a CPAP machine to bed. And now, there’s a new treatment on the horizon that doesn’t involve that dreaded CPAP.

“I hate it with a passion. It only lets me sleep really good on most cases maybe three, four hours a night. And then it gets so painful I have to take it off,” Roger Schwalm tells Ivanhoe about his CPAP.

He can go on and on about the CPAP machine he puts on nightly to treat his obstructive sleep apnea.

“I leave my mouth open at night and as soon as I try to close it a little bit, that breaks the seal on it. And the bad thing is it whistles right into the ears and wakes you right up,” Roger described.

But still, wearing the noisy mask, hooked up to a bulky hose, is better than no sleep at all. But finally, there may be another option for Roger — a drug called tirzepatide, also known as Mounjaro or Zepbound.

“It’s called GLP-1 receptor,” said Dr. Atul Malhotra from the UC San Diego School of Medicine.

It’s already FDA-approved to manage diabetes and obesity — now, researchers at UC San Diego have gotten it approved as the first effective drug therapy for sleep apnea.

“Systolic blood pressure got better. High sensitivity C-reactive protein, which is a marker of cardiovascular risk got better. The sleep apnea specific hypoxic burden, which is a marker of cardiovascular risk, also improved,” Malhotra said.

Patients also lost an average of 20% of their body weight. Now researchers want to know if it helps with sleep apnea because of the weight loss, or does it change brain function, or is it a combination of many things?

“People also reduce alcohol intake, tobacco intake goes down, gambling behaviors can change as well. So, there are quite a few changes that can occur with these medications that may be beneficial,” Malhotra said.

And hopefully it will help millions of people get the ZZZs they need.

Researchers are working on more clinical trials to examine the long-term side effects. Doctors already know it can cause short-term nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.

Also, it is known that if taken for weight loss, the drug will likely be taken for life. But Malhotra said research is still out on whether the same goes for treating sleep apnea.

Other CPAP alternatives include EPAPs, which are a nose piece that uses the user’s own exhalation to keep airways open; a hyperglossal nerve stimulation implant that sends electrical impulses to stop the tongue from collapsing and blocking airflow; and a mandibular advancement device, which is a mouth guard that holds the jaw in place.