Weight changes and sleep organisation in infants

Abstract

We have studied the relationship between weight changes and polygraphically recorded sleep, during a 24 hour period, of 26 infants aged between 2 and 11 months. Weight changes (in percentage within a period of 24 h) have been found to be correlated with the following sleep parameters: total amount of ambiguous sleep, percentage of time spent in cycle of the total sleep time, mean length of the cycles. We speculate that this relationship could be important when weight variations do not proceed as expected only on the basis of the clinical conditions and the caloric intake.