Interesting idea, especially considering how sleep problems affect inflammation....
Lead researcher Hannah Myles said 45 per cent of the patients in the study were diagnosed with sleep apnoea and eight of them were diagnosed with severe sleep apnoea.
She said the results showed that many symptoms previously thought to have been caused by schizophrenia or medication could have been caused by sleep apnoea instead.
"We found that they had very high rates of sleep apnoea - about three times more likely to have severe sleep apnoea than someone in the general population," Dr Myles said.
"In the last 10 years or so it has become a lot more well known that people who suffer from schizophrenia suffer from cardiovascular disease and obesity. Another thing we noticed was a lot of our patients lost a significant amount of weight - the average weight loss was about 13kgs.
"We are hoping that the results of our study would lead to more people with schizophrenia being offered sleep studies and the sleep apnoea being diagnosed and treated."
Researchers used CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) machines - commonly used for treating sleep apnoea - to measure its effectiveness at treating people with both schizophrenia and severe sleep apnoea.
The positive airway pressure was found to restore normal brain activity during sleep and improved the severity of sleep apnoea. It also improved memory and the overall health of participants.