Cardiac Autonomic Modulation and Sleep-Disordered Breathing in Children

The prevalence of sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) in young children currently is about 2% and may increase because of the obesity epidemic in children. The analysis of beat-to-beat heart rate variability (HRV) has been used widely as a noninvasive measurement of cardiac autonomic modulation in cardiovascular disease research. Very few studies, especially population-based studies in the sleep research field, have used HRV to assess the associations between SDB and related metabolic factors and the impairment of cardiac autonomic modulation. This article describes SDB in children, the application of HRV analysis to assess cardiac autonomic modulation, and preliminary findings of a population-based study of SDB, obesity, and cardiac autonomic modulation in children.