TY - JOUR
PY - 2015//
TI - Childhood sleepwalking and sleep terrors: a longitudinal study of prevalence and familial aggregation
JO - JAMA pediatrics
A1 - Petit, Dominique
A1 - Pennestri, Marie-Hélène
A1 - Paquet, Jean
A1 - Desautels, Alex
A1 - Zadra, Antonio
A1 - Vitaro, Frank
A1 - Tremblay, Richard E.
A1 - Boivin, Michel
A1 - Montplaisir, Jacques
SP - 653
EP - 658
VL - 169
IS - 7
N2 - IMPORTANCE: Childhood sleepwalking and sleep terrors are 2 parasomnias with a risk of serious injury for which familial aggregation has been shown.
OBJECTIVES: To assess the prevalence of sleepwalking and sleep terrors during childhood; to investigate the link between early sleep terrors and sleepwalking later in childhood; and to evaluate the degree of association between parental history of sleepwalking and presence of somnambulism and sleep terrors in children. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: Sleep data from a large prospective longitudinal cohort (the Quebec Longitudinal Study of Child Development) of 1940 children born in 1997 and 1998 in the province were studied from March 1999 to March 2011. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES: Prevalence of sleep terrors and sleepwalking was assessed yearly from ages 11/2 and 21/2 years, respectively, to age 13 years through a questionnaire completed by the mother. Parental history of sleepwalking was also queried.
RESULTS: The peak of prevalence was observed at 11/2 years for sleep terrors (34.4% of children; 95% CI, 32.3%-36.5%) and at age 10 years for sleepwalking (13.4%; 95% CI, 11.3%-15.5%). As many as one-third of the children who had early childhood sleep terrors developed sleepwalking later in childhood. The prevalence of childhood sleepwalking increases with the degree of parental history of sleepwalking: 22.5% (95% CI, 19.2%-25.8%) for children without a parental history of sleepwalking, 47.4% (95% CI, 38.9%-55.9%) for children who had 1 parent with a history of sleepwalking, and 61.5% (95% CI, 42.8%-80.2%) for children whose mother and father had a history of sleepwalking. Moreover, parental history of sleepwalking predicted the incidence of sleep terrors in children as well as the persistent nature of sleep terrors.
CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: These findings substantiate the strong familial aggregation for the 2 parasomnias and lend support to the notion that sleepwalking and sleep terrors represent 2 manifestations of the same underlying pathophysiological entity.
Language: en
LA - en SN - 2168-6211 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jamapediatrics.2015.127 ID - ref1 ER -