ESPE Abstracts

Background: Sleep quality, ghrelin hormone and obesity are associated with metabolic syndrome.

Objective and hypotheses: To study associations between sleep duration, level of ghrelin and obesity in children and adolescents.

Method: A prospective study was conducted on 50 children (their mean age: 8.7±3.2 years) with simple exogenous obesity (BMI SDS >2) recruited from Diabetes Endocrine and Metabolism Pediatric Unit, Children Hospital, Cairo University, Egypt and 70 children age and sex matched as control. Both patients and control groups were subjected to history taking including sleep history, clinical, Anthropometric assessment and laboratory investigations including (serum ghrelin, lipid profile, fasting blood glucose, and serum insulin).

Results: According to sleep history; 58 of cases showed interrupted sleep, According to mean number of sleep hours 36% of cases sleep < 6 h, 60% sleep 6–8 h, and 4% sleep more than 8 h. Mean number of sleep hours were significant less compared to the control group (P value =0.001). Mean serum ghrelin were significantly higher in cases than control (2.63±1.798 and 1.11±0.412 pg/ml; respectively, P value =0.004). Mean HOMA-IR level highly significant more in cases compared to control group (5.05±2.47 and 2.47±0.56, P value =0.001). Serum triglycerides was significant higher in cases than control group (P value=0.008). There was significant correlation between serum ghrelin level and insulin resistance (P value=0.001 and r=−0.133). There were non-significant correlation between serum ghrelin level and weight SDS (P value=0.18, r=0.03), height SDS (P value=0.6 and r=−0.107), waist to hip ratio circumference (P value=0.8 and r=0.04), BMI SDS (P value=0.3 and r=0.004) and serum triglycerides (P value=0.6 and r=−0.0758).

Conclusion: Obese children has short interrupted sleep which leads to increase level of ghrelin hormone and subsequently increase appetite leading to obesity, insulin resistance, and hypertriglyceridemia.