Snoring Linked To ADHD in Young Children

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters Health) - Frequent loud snoring that disturbs sleep may be linked to attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in some young children, according to a presentation here Monday at the 97th annual meeting of the American Thoracic Society.

``The prevalence of snoring and loud snoring is relatively high among 6-year-olds, so it is a frequent finding. However, among children with ADHD there is a doubling of the prevalence of loud snoring, which suggests that there might be a relationship between sleep-disorder breathing and risk of ADHD,'' Dr. David Gozal of the University of Louisville, Kentucky, told Reuters Health.

Gozal and his colleagues surveyed parents of more than 11,000 first-grade children and collected data on over 5,000 6-year-olds. The researchers found that 11.2% of the children had frequent loud snoring. Among the 7.3% of children with ADHD, 23% had frequent loud snoring, ``which is a doubling of the risk,'' Gozal said.

The investigators also found that snoring in children was related to parents' snoring. ``If neither parent snores than their child is less likely to snore than if both parents snore, so there might be a genetic component that influences snoring,'' Gozal noted.

However, exposure to smoking is an even greater risk factor for snoring. ``What we see is a dose-dependent effect between parental smoking and child snoring,'' Gozal added. If the father or mother smokes, a child is roughly twice as likely to snore, and if both parents smoke the child's risk of snoring nearly quadruples, he said.

``We do not know yet if that means there is a connection between ADHD and passive smoking,'' Gozal said. ``However, the trends indicate that there is such a connection, and we are looking at this now.''

Second-hand smoke may lead to snoring, which affects sleep, which in turn may increase the risk of ADHD, Gozal explained.

``We believe that for some of the children with ADHD, sleep disorder is the cause of their behavior, because among some children with ADHD when we treat their snoring, their ADHD becomes much better or totally disappears,'' he said.

For some children with ADHD, their behavior may be related to sleep-disorder breathing rather than to the process of ADHD, he said. Another portion of children with ADHD may have more severe behavioral problems because they have sleep-disorder breathing, Gozal told Reuters Health.

``Treating snoring should lead if not to complete resolution, to some improvement in behavior, which may lead to less need for medication, less need for interventions, and fewer problems in the family,'' Gozal said.

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