The communities carrying the greatest burden of poor sleep are often the least likely to receive a diagnosis or treatment. As research on sleep and cognitive health develops, that gap deserves greater attention as a potential contributor to wider brain-health inequities.
The relationship between sleep disorders and cognitive health has become an important focus of brain health research. Sleep disorders are associated with a significantly higher risk of Alzheimer's disease and all-cause dementia, and the biological mechanisms involving the brain's own waste-clearance system are increasingly better understood.
This piece focuses on COMISA, the co-occurrence of insomnia and obstructive sleep apnea. In midlife women, OSA is often the missed or undertreated component, while insomnia and sedative use dominate the clinical conversation.
GLP-1/GIP therapies are reshaping OSA care, but their arrival has exposed a critical guideline gap. Current guidelines lack operational direction on reassessment, multimodal sequencing and therapy discontinuation, risking unverified disease resolution assumptions and unsafe therapy abandonment.
At World Sleep 2025, international experts shared firsthand insights on what's broken and what's working in global OSA diagnosis. Hear the discussion on tackling missed diagnosis, challenging outdated norms and building new models of care.
Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is biologically heterogeneous, and distinct phenotypes show different treatment responses and adherence patterns. The current uniform, AHI‑driven care is misaligned with how the disease actually presents in many patients.
What happens when a therapy meets every regulatory requirement, but still isn’t covered? In sleep medicine, this is no longer an exception. It is a pattern. Devices can be FDA-cleared, clinically validated and fully coded, yet remain out of reach for patients due to fragmented and inconsistent payer policies.
