Morning Levels of C-Reactive Protein in Children with Obstructive Sleep-disordered Breathing

Abstract

Obstructive sleep-disordered breathing is associated with cardio- vascular disease in adults, and elevated C-reactive protein (CRP) has been proposed as a link between the two disorders. We hypoth- esized that children with sleep-disordered breathing have higher CRP values than do control subjects. CRP was measured in 39 chil- dren (mean age SD: 6.9 3.2 years) without snoring (controls) and in 102 children (6.2 2.2 years) with habitual snoring who underwent polysomnography. No significant differences were found in mean CRP values between control subjects (0.12 0.16 mg/dl; n 39) and snorers with an apnea-hypopnea index of less than 1 episode/hour (0.15 0.26; n 18), snorers with an index of 1 or more and less than 5 (0.15 0.26; n 54), and snorers with an index of 5 or more (0.22 0.43; n 30; p 0.05). There was no correlation between CRP or log-transformed CRP values and apnea-hypopnea index, respiratory movement/arousal index, SaO2 nadir, oxygen desaturation ( 4%) of hemoglobin index, or percentage of sleep time with saturation less than 95% (p 0.05). Thus, findings of higher CRP values in adults with sleep-disordered breathing and correlations of these values with polysomnography