Overall Obesity Not Abdominal Obesity Has a Causal Relationship with Obstructive Sleep Apnea in Individual Level Data

Xinyi Li,1,* Tao Wang,2,* Li Jin,3 Zhiqiang Li,4 Cheng Hu,3 Hongliang Yi,1 Jian Guan,1 Huajun Xu,1 Xiaolin Wu5 1Department of Otorhinolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery, Shanghai Sixth People’s Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Sleep Disordered Breathing, Otorhinolaryngology Institute of Shanghai JiaoTong University, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Endocrinology, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University, Suzhou, People’s Republic of China; 3Shanghai Diabetes Institute, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Diabetes Mellitus, Shanghai Clinical Centre for Diabetes, Shanghai Jiao Tong University Affiliated Sixth People’s Hospital, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China; 4Key Laboratory for the Genetics of Developmental and Neuropsychiatric Disorders, Bio-X Institutes, Ministry of Education, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China; 5Central Laboratory of Shanghai Eighth People’s Hospital, Xuhui Branch of Shanghai Sixth People’s Hospital, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Huajun Xu, Department of Otorhinolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery, Shanghai Sixth People’s Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Sleep Disordered Breathing, Otorhinolaryngology Institute of Shanghai JiaoTong University, Shanghai, 200233, People’s Republic of China, Email sunnydayxu2010@163.com Xiaolin Wu, Central Laboratory of Shanghai Eighth People’s Hospital, Xuhui Branch of Shanghai Sixth People’s Hospital, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China, Email wuxiaolin999@hotmail.comObjective: Both obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and obesity are highly prevalent worldwide, and are intrinsically linked. Previous studies showed that obesity is one of the major risk factors for OSA, but the causality of the relationship is sti