Children with obstructive sleep apnea are nearly three times more likely to develop high blood pressure when they become teenagers than children who never experience sleep apnea, according to a new study funded by the NHLBI. However, children whose sleep apnea improves as they grow into adolescence do not show an increased chance of having high blood pressure, which is a major risk factor for heart disease.
The long-term study, one of the largest of its kind in the pediatric population, underscores the seriousness of sleep apnea in children and the importance of early treatment, the researchers said. Their findings appear online in the journal JAMA Cardiology.
Obstructive sleep apnea, a common sleep disorder that affects millions worldwide, causes people to briefly and repeatedly stop breathing during sleep. While it occurs mostly in adults, an estimated 10% of school-aged children can also suffer from it. Although almost half of them outgrow the disorder by the time they reach adolescence, another half remain with a chronic and persistent problem. As physicians cannot accurately predict who will outgrow sleep apnea, early treatment may be beneficial to the long-term cardiovascular health of children, the researchers suggest.
While past studies have linked sleep apnea to high blood pressure and an increased risk of heart disease in adults, few have examined the long-term health impact of the disorder in children as they transition to adolescence, said lead study author Julio Fernandez-Mendoza, Ph.D., an associate professor at the Sleep Research and Treatment Center at Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
Marishka Brown, Ph.D., director of the NHLBI’s National Center on Sleep Disorders Research, noted that most of the sleep apnea findings in pediatric patients focus on the disorder’s behavioral effects, such as sleepiness, hyperactivity, and cognition.
“There is limited data on either the short- or long-term impact on cardiovascular risk in this population,” she said. “The new findings address this knowledge gap and raise awareness of sleep-disordered breathing in children as a public health problem.”