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. 2022 Jun;181(6):2491-2500.
doi: 10.1007/s00431-022-04439-2. Epub 2022 Mar 22.

Daytime sleepiness and emotional and behavioral disturbances in Prader-Willi syndrome

Affiliations

Daytime sleepiness and emotional and behavioral disturbances in Prader-Willi syndrome

Catherine S Choong et al. Eur J Pediatr. 2022 Jun.

Abstract

Individuals with Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) often have excessive daytime sleepiness and emotional/behavioral disturbances. The objective of this study was to examine whether daytime sleepiness was associated with these emotional/behavioral problems, independent of nighttime sleep-disordered breathing, or the duration of sleep. Caregivers of individuals with PWS (aged 3 to 25 years) completed the Pediatric Sleep Questionnaire (PSQ), Epworth Sleepiness Scale for Children and Adolescents (ESS-CHAD), and the parent version of the Developmental Behavior Checklist (DBC-P). Sleep adequacy was adjusted for age by computing sleep duration against age-specific recommendations. The associations between ESS-CHAD and the total DBC and its subscale scores were evaluated by linear regression, adjusted for sleep-related breathing difficulties, sleep adequacy, and body mass index (BMI). There were 54 responses for individuals with PWS (including 22 males) aged 4.4-24.0 (mean 12.5) years. Daytime sleepiness predicted a substantial proportion of the variance in total DBC-P scores in the unadjusted model (28%; β = 0.028; p < 0.001) and when adjusted for sleep adequacy, BMI, and sleep-related breathing difficulties (29%; β = 0.023; p = 0.007). This relationship was not moderated by BMI Z-scores, but the relationship was more prominent for children younger than 12 years than for children older than 12 years.Conclusions: These findings provide preliminary novel evidence that daytime sleepiness may drive the expression of emotional/behavioral disturbances, and should be explored as a potential modifiable risk factor for these disturbances in PWS, particularly pre-adolescent children.

Keywords: Genetic disorder; Intellectual disability; Mental health; Sleepiness.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Regression lines for sleepiness against total Developmental Behavior Checklist scores for a young and older individuals and b individuals with lower and higher body mass index (BMI) Z-scores

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