ESPE Abstracts

Background: Several studies found a high prevalence of sleep disorders in PWS patients. It is assumed that Prader-Willi Syndrome (PWS) patients are at a high risk of sleep disordered breathing, such as obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), because of their childhood obesity, associated with muscle hypotonia, leading to upper airway collapse.

Objective and hypotheses: We studied a group of PWS children (genetically confirmed, non-GH-treated) who performed complete sleep studies and compared to a group of non-PWS obese children (OC) matched for sex, age and BMI.

Method: All patients underwent overnight polysomnography. Data are reported as medians (interquartile range), Manne–Whitney test was used for between-group.

Results: We did not find a statistically significant difference in the prevalence of OSA between obese PWS and OC (58.8% vs 50%, P=0.64) (Table 1).

Conclusion: There is a high prevalence of OSA in PWS children, but it’s not higher than in simply obese pediatric patients. However, PWS patients were found to have distinctive polysomnographic features – the significantly shortened REM latency vs non-PWS children, suggesting possible dysregulation of sleep-wake cycle. Further research is necessary to clarify the mechanism of sleep related disorders in PWS.