Patients are sometimes treated with a machine that blows air into the patient’s airway through a face mask, but no drug treatments exist. In an advance that may change that, MIT researchers have discovered that a dietary supplement called yohimbine reverses the root cause of obstructive sleep apnea in an animal model.
Yohimbine, a chemical derived from the bark of the African yohimbe tree, has a long history of use by humans as an aphrodisiac, and more recently it has been used by bodybuilders to burn fat. It is not FDA-approved for any of these uses, however. Chi-Sang Poon, a principal research scientist at MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES), says that while the results of the obstructive sleep apnea study are promising, people should not begin taking the drug on their own, especially those who also suffer from heart disease, high blood pressure, or anxiety disorders.
“People who have these problems could be at risk if they use yohimbine,” says Poon, the senior author of the study. “Before clinical trials are done, it is not advisable for the general public to try this on their own.”