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New study suggests that overweight teens are prone to sleep apnea

Written by: David Castillo on December 15th, 2009

New study suggests that overweight teens are prone to sleep apnea | read this item

Recent research indicates that puberty can trigger sleep apnea in overweight teens.

As explained in BusinessWeek, “In sleep tests conducted on 234 white children, aged 2 to 18, who were referred for evaluation of snoring and possible obstructive sleep apnea, the researchers found that among those aged 12 and older the risk of obstructive sleep apnea increased 3.5-fold with each standard-deviation increase in body-mass index (BMI) score. But, increasing BMI did not significantly increase the risk of obstructive sleep apnea in younger children.”

Australian researches say that this increase can be linked to the developmental changes in the upper airways of the individual.

“These results were a little surprising to us initially, as obesity is generally considered to increase the risk of sleep apnea amongst all children,” explained Mark Kohler, the principal investigator and researcher at Children’s Research Center at the University of Adelaide. “Previous results have been inconsistent, however, and appear to be confounded by using mixed ethnic populations and different ages of children.”

Source: BusinessWeek

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