Obstructive Sleep Apnea Phenotypes: First Decade of Exploration and Beyond

Dear Colleagues,

We would like to invite you to contribute to this Special Issue of Pathophysiology entitled “Obstructive Sleep Apnea Phenotypes: First Decade of Exploration and Beyond”.

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a common sleep disorder with a significant heterogeneity in presentation and substantial cardio-cerebrovascular morbidity and mortality. Current practice uses the Apnea–Hypopnea index (AHI) as the main tool for classification and stratification of OSA; however, this index does not consider the heterogeneity of the clinical presentation of OSA, as patients with the identical AHIs may express different symptoms, experience different responses to therapy, as well as have different comorbid associations. This gap in the current management of OSA has been a subject of research and discussion over the past 10 years. A proposed way to address this gap is to classify the disease through quantitative and qualitative clinical, demographic, pathophysiologic, polysomnographic, and neurophysiologic characteristics and generate homogeneous categories called “phenotypes”. It has been proposed that OSA phenotypes are “categories of patients with OSA distinguished from others by a single or combination of disease features in relation to clinically meaningful attributes (symptoms, response to therapy, health outcomes, quality of life)”. It is worth noticing that this definition differs from the status of “endotype”, which would require categorization through biological or genetic mechanisms; however, phenotypes allow for further disease stratification and possible therapy strategy generation reflected in the concept of precision sleep medicine.

This Special Issue intends to review and summarize the latest articles on OSA phenotypes and their significance on management, disease prognosis, and comorbid associations.

We welcome reviews, original studies, and case reports that contribute to the field of precision sleep medicine and improve our practical understanding of OSA diagnosis, prognosis, and management based on this novel clinical methodology.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Prof. Dr. Jonathan Steven Alexander
Prof. Dr. Oleg Chernyshev
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Pathophysiology is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• OSA phenotypes
• OSA endotypes
• precision sleep medicine
• clinical polysomnographic OSA phenotypes
• pathophysiologic OSA phenotypes
• clinical neuro-physiologic OSA phenotypes
• clinical symptom-based OSA phenotypes
• quantitative
• qualitative OSA phenotypes