Morning Headaches as a Specific Obstructive Sleep Apnea Characteristic in a Large Sleep Clinic Population
Aliki Karkala, Alexandros Kalkanis, Serafeim-Chrysovalantis Kotoulas, Şakir Kaan Çetindağ, Dries Testelmans, Vasileios Paraschou, Dionisios Spyratos, Dimitrios G. Raptis, Paschalis Steiropoulos, Athanasia Pataka · 2026
Read Morning Headaches as a Specific Obstructive Sleep Apnea Characteristic in a Large Sleep Clinic Population by Aliki Karkala, Alexandros Kalkanis, Serafeim-Chrysovalantis Kotoulas, Şakir Kaan Çetindağ, Dries Testelmans, Vasileios Paraschou, Dionisios Spyratos, Dimitrios G. Raptis, Paschalis Steiropoulos, Athanasia Pataka (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13514924.txt.
Description
Aliki Karkala leads a ten-author team investigating morning headaches in obstructive sleep apnoea, in a 2026 retrospective study of 3,227 adults treated at a sleep clinic between 2013 and 2023. Waking headaches are a recognised apnoea symptom. The researchers split patients by headache frequency, comparing those with at least one episode weekly against the rest.
About thirty-five percent reported frequent morning headaches. Simple comparisons tied them to female sex, larger waist size, worse oxygen dips, sleepiness, and insomnia complaints. A tighter analysis of patients with complete sleep-study data reshaped the picture. Being female, waist size, and the rate of brief brain arousals during sleep predicted frequent headaches, while standard breathing-severity measures did not. Karkala's team argues that fragmented sleep, more than apnoea severity itself, drives these headaches, especially in women.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Aliki Karkala, Alexandros Kalkanis, Serafeim-Chrysovalantis Kotoulas, Şakir Kaan Çetindağ, Dries Testelmans, Vasileios Paraschou, Dionisios Spyratos, Dimitrios G. Raptis, Paschalis Steiropoulos, Athanasia Pataka |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 35 KB |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |