Sleep apnea and hypertension

Guidry, U., Lind, B.K., Newman, A.B., Nieto, F.J., Pickering, T.G., Redline, S., & Quan, S.F. (2001). Relation of sleep-disordered breathing to cardiovascular disease risk factors. American Journal of Epidemiology, 154(1), 50-59.
Since I have had an irregular sleep pattern due to my past career, I was interested to study the effects of sleep upon my own high blood pressure. The study hypothesized that sleep apnea increases the risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD) and hypertension (high blood pressure). Until now it was not clear whether CVD was preceded by a sleep-disordered problem or became a consequence because of it.
The study acknowledged that important limitations existed throughout. Due to the nature of the study (observational) it would be disallowable to draw conclusions of the cause and effects of the sleep and CVD associations. Another limitation was combining data across time and with alterations in protocol decreasing the ability to detect these associations between sleep disorders and CVD. The use of data that was obtained in self-reports of CVD, diabetes, and hypertension could skew the efforts due to wrong classifications and underestimation.
The study warned against using the data for population prevalence of estimations. The study suggested that future studies evaluate the role of a sleep-disorder as an independent factor for risk of CVD using careful adjustments for other CVD risk factors.
I am very interested in more studies of this phenomenon. Soon I am due to become a client of a sleep study that hopefully will uncover some of my own deficiencies that may be causing some of my sleep disruptions. I found this study to be very thought provoking. I knew there was a correlation and now I know how hard that correlation is to study and predict.