Snoring – and the health issues it creates – is a problem that has long been reserved for adults. But new research shows that snoring children also suffer during waking hours.
Children who snore regularly show signs of structural changes in their brains that can lead to behavioral problems, such as lack of focus, hyperactivity and cognitive challenges – to the detriment of their education.
The new study, published in the journal Nature Communications, observed for the first time that children who snore three or more times a week show thinner gray matter in the brain compared to children who sleep normally. Poor sleep has been shown to reduce gray matter, the areas of the brain that contain the most dense neurons, which play a critical role in daily activities, especially in terms of impulse control and reasoning skills.
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Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine have scanned MRI images of more than 10,000 children aged 9 to 10 years enrolled in the National Institutes of Health’s Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study, or ABCD Study, a long-term project to to detect children’s brains. health in the US.
“These brain changes are similar to what you would see in children with attention deficit disorder,” said lead author Dr. Amal Isaiah, said. “Children lose cognitive control, which is also accompanied by disruptive behavior.”
Obstructive sleep disorders, including snoring, mouth breathing and breathing pauses during sleep, occur in up to 10% of American children – more than 7 million, according to researchers. They added that a “significant” proportion of cases could be misdiagnosed as ADHD and treated with stimulants, which could potentially further complicate sleep.
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“If you have a child who snores more than twice a week, that child should be evaluated,” Isaiah said. “We now have strong structural evidence of brain imaging to reinforce the importance of the diagnosis and treatment of sleep disorders in children.”
Isaiah calls the project ‘the largest study of its kind to explain the link between snoring and brain disorders’.
For most, the condition can be corrected by tonsillectomy or adenoidectomy. “Timely recognition” of the issue is critical, said co-author, dr. Linda Chang, said.
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“We know that the brain has the ability to repair itself, especially in children,” Chang said. “More research is needed to empower such mechanisms for these relationships, which could also lead to further treatment approaches.”
Now, if scientists could only invent a formula to simply convince children to go to bed in the first place – an often futile attempt to lose parents to six days of sleep a year.
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