There seems to be a link involving the common sleep disorder called obstructive sleep apnea and major depression, a new study implies.

In individuals with obstructive sleep apnea, the upper airway is blocked by soft tissue in the back of the throat during sleep. This ends in pauses in breathing as well as other sleep symptoms like snorting, snoring and gasping.

In the new study, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researchers surveyed about 9,700 American adults and found that 6 percent of the guys and 3 percent of the women said they had been diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea.

The CDC team discovered that symptoms of the sleep disorder were associated with many depression symptoms, including feeling hopeless and feeling like a failure. This association was not impacted by factors for example gender, age, weight or race, they noted.

There clearly was no link noticed between regular snoring and depression, however, the researchers pointed out in the report, published in the April issue of the journal Sleep.

“We expected individuals with sleep-disordered breathing to report trouble sleeping or sleeping too much, or feeling drained and having little energy, but not the other symptoms,” such as hopelessness, lead study author Anne Wheaton, a CDC epidemiologist, said in a news release in the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.

Even though the study uncovered an association between obstructive sleep apnea as well as melancholy, it failed to show a cause-and-effect relationship.