Evaluation of sleep properties and sleep-related hormones in obese children

Introduction: One of the important causes of obesity-related mortality and morbidity in adulthood is sleep obstructive apnea syndrome and cardiovascular diseases that develop due to it. These complications of obesity usually begin to show clinical signs in adulthood, but the clinical manifestations of hormones that affect sleep (especially melatonin hormone secretion) and sleep disorder can begin in the early stages.In this study, we tried to reveal whether sleep quality is affected in the early period in obesity by means of melatonin levels, which may indicate sleep disorders in childhood and adolescence, and sleep assessment scales. Material and Methods: The study was conducted with 44 obese patients between the ages of 3-17, who applied to the pediatric endocrinology outpatient clinic of our hospital and whose body mass index (BMI) was above the 95th percentile for their age, and 44 control patients of similar age and gender with normal weight. The blood melatonin levels, daily sleep times, falling asleep times, sleep scale and Epworth sleepiness scale responses of the patient and control groups were compared. Results: Although the mean age of all participants in this study was 10.8 (+-4.23) years, 32 (36.4) were in the prepubertal period and 56 (63.6%) were in the pubertal period. When the gender distributions of both groups were examined together, 55 (66.5%) of the participants were female and 33% (37.5%) were male. It was seen that there was no statistically significant difference between the two groups in terms of daily sleep duration. There was no statistically significant difference between the groups in the duration of falling asleep after going to bed, and the highest rate in all groups was composed of children who fell asleep less than 15 minutes after going to bed. No statistically significant difference was found between the sleep scale and sleepiness levels of both groups. However, the serum melatonin levels of the obese group were significantly higher than the melatonin levels of the control group. Conclusions: In our study,sleep disturbance was not observed in obese children as in normal-weight children,but melatonin levels were found to be significanlty higher in obese children.Our findings suggest that compensatory mechanisms start to work aganist the negative effects of obesity in obese children and respond by increasing melatonin secretion Keywords: child, obesity, melatonin, sleep disorder scale, epworth sleepiness scale