A recent study conducted by the University of California shows tissue loss in the part of the brain that stores memory is related to sleep apnoea.

Sleep  apnoea is a condition where a person’s breathing stops multiple times during the night repeatedly waking them up, leading to chronic daytime fatigue, concentration and memory difficulties.

The condition is also linked to an increased risk of heart disease, diabetes and stroke.

Lead investigator of the study Ronald Harper, a professor of neurobiology at UCLA, says the study findings, “demonstrate that impaired breathing during sleep can lead to serious brain injury that disrupts memory and thinking," reports Health News.

Harper’s team used MRI to scan patients brains with sleep apnoea, focusing on brain structures called mammillary bodies located on the underside of the brain.

The researchers found the mammillary bodies of the 42 sleep apnea sufferers were almost 20 per cent smaller than the 66 patients without sleep apnea.

The results were published in Neuroscience Letters.

Professor Harper suggests the continued drop in oxygen may lead to brain injury, including death to brain cells.

"The reduced size of the mammillary bodies suggest that they've suffered a harmful event resulting in sizable cell loss. The fact that patients' memory problems continue despite treatment for their sleep disorder implies a long-lasting brain injury," he said to Health News.

Rajesh Kumar, lead author of the study said patients suffering memory loss from other conditions like Alzheimer’s or alcoholism also exhibit reduced mammillary bodies, which adds weight to the study.

Typically memory loss problems in alcoholics are treated with large amounts of vitamin B1 or thiamine, under the belief that it helps dying brain cells to recover, enabling the brain to use them again.

Kumar and Harper want to study the supplemental B1 vitamin to see if it can restore memory in sleep apnoea patients, as the vitamin moves glucose into cells, preventing them from dying due to oxygen starvation.