Shorter sleep duration is associated with social impairment and comorbidities in ASD.
Olivia J Veatch, James S Sutcliffe, Zachary E Warren and 3 others
PMID 28301091WHAT IT FOUND
In 2,714 children with autism spectrum disorder, shorter parent-reported sleep was associated with more severe social impairment, repetitive behaviors, lower IQ, and more ADD, depressive disorder, and obsessive compulsive disorder reports.
It does not show that sleep causes symptoms or that treating sleep improves them.
Key findings
01Shorter parent-reported sleep duration was associated with more severe social impairment and restricted or repetitive behaviors on the ADI-R, and with more severe observed social and communication behavior on the ADOS.
02Shorter sleep duration was associated with lower verbal and nonverbal IQ scores and with more severe maladaptive behavior problems on the Child Behavior Checklist.
03Children in the extremely short sleep subgroup (≤7 hours) had increased reports of ADD, depressive disorder, and obsessive compulsive disorder.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
Sleep duration came from parent report, not objective sleep measurement, and the authors note that parent reports of sleep problems can be inaccurate. The study is cross-sectional, so it cannot tell whether short sleep causes worse symptoms, worse symptoms cause short sleep, or both share another cause. No accepted ideal sleep duration for children with autism was available, so the authors defined extremes using percentiles within this sample. Medications, neurological conditions, medical comorbidities, and environment may affect sleep, and the authors could not ensure short sleep was not due to these factors. ADI-R scores can reflect earliest abnormal behavior between ages 4 and 5, while sleep was reported as current, which may mismatch the time periods being compared. Only 12% of children had both current and ever sleep duration reports, so long-term sleep patterns could not be fully evaluated.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that short sleep causes worse autism symptoms or that improving sleep will improve symptoms. This was a cross-sectional association study using parent-reported sleep, so it cannot show cause and effect.