Earlier this week the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) posted an executive summary of a Sept. 9, 2010, workshop on Pediatric Sleep Disturbances and their Contribution to Developmental Pathophysiology of Cardiometabolic Risk.
Recommendations include targeting research to define the contribution of sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) to cardiovascular pathophysiology, validate cardiovascular biomarkers as surrogate endpoints for subsequent clinically significant disease in children with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), and define the mechanistic links and test the direction of the causal association between SDB effects on pathological mechanisms of cardiometabolic disease (CMD). The summary also calls for research to evaluate developmental changes in sleep duration and timing from conception through adolescence and their links to a variety of pediatric health outcomes.
