MONDAY, May 5 (HealthDay News) -- Habitual snoring among children is associated with a higher risk of nocturnal enuresis, while mild increases in sleep pressure caused by elevated plasma levels of brain natriuretic peptide also play a role, researchers report in the May issue of Pediatrics.
Oscar Sans Capdevila, M.D., and colleagues at the University of Louisville in Louisville, Ky., conducted a study of 17,646 children whose parents were surveyed on habitual snoring and enuresis. A subset of 378 children with habitual snoring underwent overnight polysomnographic evaluation while three groups of 20 children each with sleep apnea, habitual snoring without obstructive sleep apnea or no snoring, matched for enuresis, were also tested for brain natriuretic peptide plasma levels.
Of the 1,976 children (11.2 percent of the total) who habitually snored, 531 (26.9 percent) also had enuresis, the investigators found. Boys accounted for 472 cases (87.5 percent). Enuresis was reported among 1,821 (11.6 percent) of the 15,670 children who did not snore, of whom 88.8 percent were boys. There was no correlation between magnitude of sleep disturbances and enuresis among snoring children, the researchers report.
"Brain natriuretic peptide levels were elevated among children with enuresis and were marginally increased among children with obstructive sleep apnea," the authors write. "Even mild increases in sleep pressure because of habitual snoring may raise the arousal threshold and promote enuresis, particularly among prone children, that is, those with elevated brain natriuretic peptide levels."
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