BOSTON, Feb 6: Forcing the heart to beat faster during sleep significantly relieves sleep apnea, the common but potentially dangerous condition in which a person stops breathing during slumber, a team of French doctors reported on Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

In tests on 15 people, a team led by Dr Stephane Garrigue of the Cardiology Hospital of Haut-Leveque in Pessac, France, found when the heart rate was 57 beats per minute, breathing stopped nine times per hour.

But when the pace was increased to 72 beats per minute, the number of apnea episodes each hour dropped to three.

“Regardless of the severity of the sleep apnea syndrome,” the researchers said, “there was a reduction (in the number of episodes) ... in every patient.”

The Garrigue team, which said it was still trying to explain the finding, said the technique could relieve sleep apnea in people who already have an adjustable pacemaker.

Whether pacemakers should be used as a treatment for apnea “remains to be determined.”

Estimates vary on the number of people who suffer from sleep apnea, where breathing ceases and the sufferer is forced to wake up to resume breathing.

More than 10 per cent of people over 65 are believe to experience it.

Sufferers tend to wake up tired, and over the years, sleep apnea seems to increase the risk of high blood pressure, heart problems and early death. It can be caused by soft tissue that flops into the throat and cuts off breathing, or originate in the central nervous system when the body simply stops trying to breathe.—Reuters