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 Parents, teachers, and health care professionals need to be aware of
the potential effects of sleep-disordered breathing and be able to
recognize the symptoms, Barbara Galland, who led the study, said in
an email.
Galland, from the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, and her
colleagues analyzed data pooled from 16 studies done in 12
countries, each including an average of about 550 children ages 5 to
17.
The studies looked at symptoms of sleep-disordered breathing, such
as habitual snoring and sleep apnea (pauses in breathing while
asleep), as well as students' grades as reported by their school or
their parents.
The combined academic scores overall of students with breathing
problems during sleep were roughly 12 percent lower than scores of
students without sleep-disordered breathing, the researchers
reported in the journal Pediatrics.
In particular, language arts scores were 12.3 percent lower, math
scores were 13.1 percent lower, and science scores were 11.6 percent
lower for the affected kids.
According to study published in 2009 in the journal Sleep, roughly
one in every 100 elementary school children in the U.S. has
sleep-disordered breathing.
“Although many studies find that the average achievement of children
with sleep-disordered breathing remains in the range of typical
children, children with sleep-disordered breathing may be more at
risk for performing below this level," Galland said.
"That is, some children with sleep-disordered breathing may be
performing less well on the tests. What we do not know is which
children are more likely to do less well,” she added.
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The studies represented academic performance at one point in time,
and “negative effects over time cannot be ruled out,” the
researchers wrote.
When sleep-disordered breathing is related to children's tonsils and
adenoids, removing them might be helpful, the researchers said.
“For other children, jaw alignment may contribute and dental
treatment is being developed to address this,” Galland said. “Other
health factors such as obesity can also contribute to
sleep-disordered breathing, another reason for developing effective
approaches to address this complex health issue."
More research is needed, she added, to understand which children are
most at risk for academic difficulty associated with sleep
disordered breathing and to figure out how they can be helped.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1kCYrQ1 Pediatrics, online September 7, 2015.
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