Sleep and its association with dental caries or myopia in first graders.
Han-Yi Tsai, Tzu-I Tsai, Yin-Lin Wang and 3 others
PMID 38268265WHAT IT FOUND
First graders sleeping under 9 hours had 1.94 times higher risk of dental caries after accounting for parental caries, age and gender.
Sleep was not associated with myopia. The study cannot show short sleep caused caries.
Key findings
01After adjusting for parental caries, age and gender, total sleep duration less than 9 hours had 1.94 times higher risk of dental caries than sleeping 9 hours or more.
02No association was found between children's sleep and the risk of myopia.
03Maternal caries was associated with child caries with a reported odds ratio of 3.37.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The study was cross-sectional, so it cannot show that short sleep caused dental caries. Participants came from 8 of 20 public elementary schools in Taipei using convenience sampling, so the findings may not generalise to other children. Sleep and some health information were parent-reported and distributed by school staff, which can lead to socially desirable answers and less precise measurement. Bedtime behaviours such as sugar consumption before sleep were not measured, so they could explain part of the caries association. Only 9.5% of children had myopia, limiting the ability to detect a sleep-myopia association in first graders. Dental caries and myopia status relied partly on school health check information and parental report rather than a full clinical examination in the study.
Declared interests
This study was supported by a Foxconn Education Foundation Scholarship. English editing was subsidized by National Taiwan University under a grant from the National Science and Technology Council, Taiwan. The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that increasing sleep to 9 hours or more will prevent dental caries. The study was cross-sectional and used parent-reported information, so it can show association but not cause.