Snoring Kids May Become Hyperactive
Excerpt By Maggie Fox, Reuters Health

Kids who snore may be prone to acting up in class, U.S. researchers reported, saying Hispanic children appeared to be more likely to have the problem.

Their study found a clear link between trouble sleeping and behavioral and learning disorders, and also found clear ethnic differences.

"We're not sure why. It was kind of a surprise to us," Jamie Goodwin, a University of Arizona epidemiologist who led the study, said Monday in a telephone interview.

His team analyzed data from a survey of 1,200 parents with children ages 4 through 11 attending Tucson-area schools.

They found that 11.4 percent of Hispanic parents reported that their children snored, compared with 7.4 percent of white parents. More Hispanic parents reported their children were sleepy during the day, and more reported their children had sleep apnea -- a disorder in which the upper airway collapses during sleep, causing numerous, brief interruptions in breathing.

This translated into problems at school, Goodwin's team reports in this week's issue of the journal Chest, published by the American College of Chest Physicians.

They said 6.5 percent of Hispanic parents reported their children, mainly boys, had learning problems, while only 3.7 percent of white parents did.

It could be that some parents were more anxious and ready to report both sleep and learning problems, Goodwin said. But he said other studies have tended to support the findings.

"We also are doing about a three-hour neurocognitive exam in these same kids, and hopefully in a year or so we may have results that are more objective," Goodwin said.

Some surveys suggest that 320,000 children nationwide suffer from some sort of breathing-related sleep disorder, Goodwin's team said.

Children may have a flabbier airway than adults, which could make it prone to collapse when they sleep, Goodwin said.

"Something I personally would like to look at is the times that children go to bed," he said. "If a child is exceptionally sleepy, whether that could affect airway rigidity. These 6-, 7-, 8-, 9-year-old kids should be getting 10 to 11 hours sleep, easy, and a lot of them don't."

Adults who snore or who have sleep apnea may feel sleepy during the day, dozing off at inappropriate times. "With a child they are hyperactive," Goodwin said.

Sometimes this hyperactivity mimics attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, and children could be given inappropriate stimulant medication, he said.

A second, unrelated study suggests a chemical imbalance in the brain might cause or result from sleep disruption.

A team at the University of Michigan studied 13 patients with multiple system atrophy -- a rare neurological disease accompanied by severe sleep disorders.

Writing in the journal Neurology, they said they found MSA patients were missing brain cells that produce the key message-carrying chemicals dopamine and acetylcholine.

It is not clear whether the missing brain cells are a cause or an effect, but the team said the findings could shed light on the sleep disorders suffered by millions.

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