This study aims to explore if there is a causal association between adolescence sleep problems and overweight/obesity (Ow/Ob) in young adults.
Youth self-reports were used to explore if adolescence (mean age 13.90 years, SD ±0.32) sleep problems lead to general Ow/Ob, computed from body mass index (n = 1075), or abdominal Ow/Ob, computed from waist circumference and waist to height ratio (n = 1179), in young adults (mean age 20.65 years, SD±0.82). Directed acyclic graphs were used to identify potential confounders, modified Poisson regression with a robust error variance was used to model the associations, and inverse probability weights were used to account for loss to follow-up.
At adolescence, 27.37% of the subjects reported having frequent sleep problems, and about a fifth of these subjects (22.65%) developed general Ow/Ob at young adulthood. Unadjusted regression analysis indicates a link between adolescent sleep problems and general Ow/Ob in young adults (incidence rate ratio [IRR]: 1.34, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.08-2.03), and this link was robust to adjustment for potential confounders (IRR: 1.47, 95% CI: 1.07-2.02). However, no such association was seen for adolescence sleep problems, and abdominal Ow/Ob computed from waist circumference (IRR: 1.30, 95% CI: 0.91-1.87) and waist to height ratio (IRR: 1.27, 95% CI: 0.86-1.88).
Although there is evidence for a causal association between sleep problems and general Ow/Ob, the link between sleep problems and abdominal Ow/Ob needs more research to produce conclusive results. Nonetheless, behavioral interventions encouraging healthy sleep practice in young subjects are likely to influence future Ow/Ob outcome.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 2. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 03 April 2018.
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