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WEDNESDAY, Feb. 19, 2020 (HealthDay News) — More frequent exposure to late sleep is associated with increases in adiposity in children aged 2 to 6 years, especially among those with overweight and\/or obese parents, according to a study published online Feb. 18 in Pediatrics<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Lijuan Xiu, M.D., from the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, and colleagues compared sleep in young children at different obesity risks, including 43 with normal-weight parents (low obesity risk) and 64 with overweight and\/or obese parents (high obesity risk). Actigraphy was used to measure sleep yearly from ages 2 to 6 years. Five sleep characteristics were examined, with a higher score indicating more frequent exposure.<\/p>\n
The researchers found that children at different risks had no difference in sleep patterns. Across ages, there was an association for higher short sleep duration score with a greater increase in body mass index (BMI) z score (0.12; 95 percent confidence interval [CI], 0.01 to 0.25). A higher late sleep score was associated with greater increases in BMI z score and waist circumference (0.16 [95 percent CI, 0.05 to 0.27] and 0.60 cm [95 percent CI, 0.23 to 0.98], respectively), independent of sleep duration. Children at high risk and with habitual late sleep had greater increases in the BMI z score and waist circumference compared with those at low risk and without habitual late sleep (0.93 [95 percent CI, 0.40 to 1.45] and 3.45 cm [95 percent CI, 1.78 to 5.12], respectively).<\/p>\n
These data “make an important contribution to the accumulating evidence supporting a link between decreased sleep and adiposity,” write the authors of an accompanying editorial. “Whether this association is causal, and therefore amenable to intervention, will be a far more difficult question to answer.”<\/p>\n
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