Childhood sleep: assessments, risk factors, and potential mechanisms

Abstract

Background Sleep problem is a highly prevalent health issue among pediatric populations across the world. In this review, we aimed to identify risk factors contributing to sleep deficiency and poor sleep hygiene in children. Potential biological, psychosocial, and environmental mechanisms as well as research gaps in the literature are also discussed. Data sources A comprehensive search for relevant English language full-text, peer-reviewed publications was performed focusing on pediatric sleep studies from prenatal to childhood and adolescence in a variety of indexes in PubMed, SCOPUS, and Psych Info. Both relevant data based and systematic reviews are included. Results This paper summarizes many risk factors for childhood sleep problems, including biological (e.g., genetics, gender, age and puberty, prenatal factors, postnatal factors); nutritional (e.g., macronutrients, micronutrients, omega-3 fatty acids, obesity); environmental (e.g., heavy metals, noise, light, air pollution); interpersonal (e.g., family, exposure to violence, screen media use, physical injury); and community/socioeconomic variables (e.g., racial/ethnicity and cultural factors, neighborhood conditions and socioeconomic status, school factors, public health disasters/emergencies), to better understand the development of sleep problems in children. Conclusions Poor childhood sleep is a multifactorial issue affected by a wide range of prenatal and early-life biological, environmental, and psychosocial risk factors and contributors. A better understanding of these risk factors and their mechanisms is an important first step to develop future research and prevention programs focusing on pediatric sleep problems.

Influencia de los hábitos deportivos en el conocimiento, calidad e higiene del sueño adolescente

“…La puntuación de cada subescala se calcula tomando la media aritmética de los ítems que la componen. La media de las puntuaciones de cada dimensión resulta en la higiene del sueño de esa persona, considerándose mala higiene del sueño (ASHSr ≤ 3.8) o buena higiene del sueño (ASHSr ≥ 4.9) (Liu et al, 2022).…”