Review ArticleOverview of proteomics studies in obstructive sleep apnea

•OSA is an underdiagnosed disease causing deleterious effects on health.•Protein-based biomarkers can be useful for OSA diagnosis and therapy evaluation.•New advances in proteomics are very promising for OSA biomarker discovery.•Four proteomic studies in children/urine and six in adults/blood have been reported.•Much investigation remains to be done to define reliable biomarkers for OSA.

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is an underdiagnosed common public health concern causing deleterious effects on metabolic and cardiovascular health. Although much has been learned regarding the pathophysiology and consequences of OSA in the past decades, the molecular mechanisms associated with such processes remain poorly defined. The advanced high-throughput proteomics-based technologies have become a fundamental approach for identifying novel disease mediators as potential diagnostic and therapeutic targets for many diseases, including OSA. Here, we briefly review OSA pathophysiology and the technological advances in proteomics and the first results of its application to address critical issues in the OSA field.

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