Steven A. Shea, Ph.D., Director, Oregon Institute of Occupational Health Sciences and colleagues were awarded $2.5M from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study the role of the internal body clock on cardiovascular risk.

Adverse cardiovascular events, such as heart attacks and sudden cardiac death occur most commonly, on average, at about 9 AM in the general population, but most frequently at around 3 AM in people with obstructive sleep apnea. The goal of the newly funded study is to determine if the internal body clock affects cardiovascular function differently in people with sleep apnea compared to healthy people, perhaps explaining the different timing of adverse events in people with sleep apnea.

Dr. Shea is the principal investigator of this project and his colleagues on the award include other Institute researchers: Matthew Butler PhD, Saurabh Thosar PhD, Michael Lasarev MS, Noal Clemons, Sally Roberts, Alec Berman, and sleep medicine physicians from OHSU (Chad Hagen MD) and the VA Portland Health Care System (Jonathan Emens MD). The work will be performed in a new facility recently built as part of the Oregon Clinical & Translational Research Center at OHSU.