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Prevalence of obstructive sleep apnea syndrome in Japanese elementary school children aged 6–8 years

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Abstract

Purpose

We aimed to determine the prevalence of and the risk factors for obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS) in Japanese children aged 6–8 years.

Methods

The parents of 202 children aged 6–8 years who attended a single elementary school in Shiga, Japan, were requested to complete the Child and Adolescent Sleep Checklist (CASC) and perform home Type 3 portable monitoring of their children. By using the CASC data and monitor recordings, we estimated the prevalence of pediatric OSAS with the help of different diagnostic criteria and identified the risk factors associated with OSAS.

Results

Complete data were obtained from 170 of the 194 children whose parents participated in the study. The mean total apnea–hypopnea index and obstructive apnea hypopnea index were 1.4 ± 1.3 and 0.4 ± 0.6 h−1, respectively, and central apnea was the most prevalent type of respiratory event, accounting for 70.4 % of all events. The overall prevalence of OSAS ranged from 0.6 % to 43.5 %, depending on the cutoff value used, and was 3.5 % when using International Criteria of Sleep Disorders version II (ICSD II) diagnostic criteria. The presence of tonsillar hypertrophy was the only parameter whose prevalence was significantly elevated in children with OSAS across all diagnostic criteria.

Conclusions

The prevalence of pediatric OSAS varies according to the diagnostic criteria used, indicating the need for further research focusing on outcomes to define a clinically significant diagnostic threshold. The presence of tonsillar hypertrophy is an important risk factor in the development of pediatric OSAS.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank the staff of the Department of Sleep Medicine, Shiga University of Medical Science, for logistical support and the school staff, children, and their parents for their cooperation and participation. This work was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B) (no. 21390461) from the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science.

Conflict of interest

We have no conflicts of interest or financial interests to declare.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sleep Medicine, Shiga University of Medical Science, Seta Tsukinowa-cho, Otsu, Shiga, 520-2192, Japan

    Takuro Kitamura, Soichiro Miyazaki, Takashi Kanemura & Masako Okawa

  2. Department of Otorhinolaryngology, University of Occupational and Environmental Health, Kitakyushu, Japan

    Takuro Kitamura & Hideaki Suzuki

  3. Center for Genomic Medicine, Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto, Japan

    Hiroshi Kadotani

  4. Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Social Insurance Shiga Hospital, Otsu, Shiga, Japan

    Ichiro Komada

  5. Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Ohmikusatsu Tokushukai Hospital, Kusatsu-shi, Shiga, Japan

    Michiko Nishikawa

  6. Sleep Disordered Breathing Center, Ayagawa National Health Insurance Sue Hospital, Ayagawa, Kagawa, Japan

    Ryuichi Kobayashi

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  1. Takuro Kitamura
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  2. Soichiro Miyazaki
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Correspondence to Takuro Kitamura.

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Kitamura, T., Miyazaki, S., Kadotani, H. et al. Prevalence of obstructive sleep apnea syndrome in Japanese elementary school children aged 6–8 years. Sleep Breath 18, 359–366 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11325-013-0893-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11325-013-0893-5

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