Children who have problems breathing during sleep tend to score lower on tests of mental development and intelligence than do other children their age, according to two studies funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Both studies appear in the October issue of Journal of Pediatrics.
The first study, funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), found that at one year of age, infants who have multiple, brief breathing pauses (apnea) or slow heart rates during sleep scored lower on mental development tests than did other infants of the same age. The second study was funded primarily by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI). Results show that 5-year-old children who had frequent snoring, loud or noisy breathing during sleep, or sleep apneas observed by parents scored lower on intelligence, memory, and other standard cognitive tests than other children their age. They were also more likely to have behavioral problems.
"The findings from these studies support other research that has shown that breathing problems during sleep are associated with serious health consequences in children," said Carl E. Hunt, M.D., director of the NIH National Center on Sleep Disorders Research (NCSDR). "However, at this point we don't know if the sleep problems during these episodes cause the decline in test scores or if the sleep episodes and the lower test scores are both related to some common underlying mechanism."
More than 10 percent of young children have habitual snoring, the mildest form of sleep-disordered breathing (SDB). One to three percent of children have obstructive sleep apnea, a more severe form of SDB in which breathing stops briefly and repeatedly during sleep. SDB is thought to be more common in toddlers and younger children than in older children because the younger ones are more likely to have large tonsils and adenoids, which can briefly block the airways in the back of the throat during sleep. African American children are twice as likely to develop SDB compared to white children. Children who are overweight or obese are also more likely to develop SDB.
In the first study, researchers evaluated 256 full-term and preterm infants at one year of age with a standardized test that measured physical and mental development. The infants were part of the multi-center Collaborative Home Infant Monitoring Evaluation (CHIME) study. The CHIME study sought to identify factors that could put infants at risk for sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). Participants included healthy infants as well as those at increased risk of SIDS because they had a history of prematurity, a life-threatening event during sleep, or a sibling who had died from SIDS. The infants' breathing, heart rates, and blood oxygen levels were monitored electronically at home for the first 4-6 months of age.
The researchers found that infants who totaled more than five episodes of abnormally slowed heart rate or apnea during the period they were monitored scored lower on the mental development test at one year of age than did infants who experienced fewer or no such episodes. The episodes were often associated with drops in oxygen levels. The lower mental development scores persisted even after data were adjusted to correct for other factors known to affect mental development in preterm infants. The study also found that full-term infants who experienced the abnormal episodes scored lower on the tests than did other full term infants, according to Hunt, the lead author, who conducted the research while at the Medical College of Ohio in Toledo.
The second study involved 205 children at 5 years of age. Researchers at Boston University School of Medicine compared neurocognitive function and behavior of 61 children with SDB symptoms to 144 children without symptoms. Symptoms of SDB, as reported by parents, included frequent snoring; heavy, loud, or noisy breathing during sleep; or observed apneas during sleep. An overnight sleep test (polysomnogram) was also performed to objectively measure the severity of SDB.
The study found that children with SDB symptoms scored lower on standard tests measuring executive function (attention and planning), memory, and general intelligence. These children also had significantly more behavioral problems than children without SDB symptoms, based on parental survey scores.
"One of the more remarkable findings in this study was that the neurocognitive effects were significant even among the children who had mild symptoms of sleep-disordered breathing but no actual sleep apneas," said Daniel Gottlieb, M.D., M.P.H., lead author of the study. "Parents need to be aware that their child's snoring could signal serious problems."