Habitual snoring linked to increased asthma symptom burden, Study says

The study is published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

Inner-city children are disproportionately affected by asthma and sleep-disordered breathing (SDB). However, little is known about the association of SDB symptoms with asthma morbidity in this vulnerable population.

Therefore, Sigfus Gunnlaugsson and colleagues from the Division of Pulmonary Medicine, Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Mass carried out the present study with the objective to assess the relationship between snoring frequency and asthma morbidity.

This study was part of the School Inner-City Asthma Study, a longitudinal prospective cohort study of children with persistent asthma who attended schools in the Northeast United States. Participants had baseline assessments of asthma symptoms, snoring, and allergy status.

Caregivers completed quarterly surveys for 12 months on symptoms of asthma, snoring, and health care outcomes. Snoring frequency (non-, rare-, sometimes-, habitual-snoring) and its relationship with asthma symptoms and asthma morbidity were assessed by mixed-effects models.

The following findings were observed-

a. There were 1186 observations from 339 subjects.

b. Mean age was 7.9 years; roughly half were male, and most were of minority race.

c. Half were overweight or obese, and 65.5% had atopy.

d. At initial snoring assessment, 24.8% reported habitual snoring, but report of snoring frequency varied over the study period.

e. Multivariate analyses revealed increased odds of maximum asthma symptom days for habitual snoring compared with nonsnoring (1.58; 95% CI, 1.19-2.10; P < .002) and all other snoring categories. f. Habitual snoring was associated with greater odds of health care utilization (incidence rate ratio, 1.72; 95% CI, 1.10-2.69; P = .02) and worse asthma control (odds ratio, 1.49; 95% CI, 1.05-2.11; P = .03) compared with nonsnoring.

Hence, the authors concluded that "snoring is common among inner-city school-age children with asthma, and habitual snoring is associated with increased asthma symptom burden and health care utilization."