Oct. 10, 2008 About two-thirds of children with sleep-disordered
breathing (SDB)— snoring or obstructive sleep apnea (OSA)— have
some degree of cognitive deficit, but the severity of the
cognitive deficit has been notoriously difficult to correlate to
the severity of the SDB, suggesting that other important issues
may be at play, or that the right factors were simply not being
measured. A new study that will be published in the first issue
for November of the American Thoracic Society's American Journal
of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine opens the door to
understanding the complex relationship between sleep, breathing
and brain function in a whole new way. "A history of snoring is
a predictor for cognitive deficit in children with SDB," said
principle investigator Raouf Amin, M.D., professor of pediatrics
and the director of the Division of Pulmonary Medicine at
Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. "However, the
frequency of apnea events during sleep does not predict
cognitive deficit and doe