Is YOUR child getting enough sleep? Researchers say they can find out by using a blood test
- A blood test would be more reliable than asking children or their parents
- Scientists said levels of certain bits of genetic material could reveal sleep habits
- Children who don’t sleep enough are more at risk of health problems as they age
Doctors could tell whether a child is sleep-deprived simply by doing a blood test, according to scientists.
Children should get at least nine hours’ sleep a night until they’re 16 years old, and not getting enough could damage their health.
Too little sleep may stunt children’s growth, make them less able to pay attention at school and up their odds of being overweight or diabetic.
It can be hard to tell how much sleep a child really gets because it depends on them, or their parents, remembering or telling the truth to a doctor.
Parents may not even have an accurate idea of how much sleep their child gets if they don’t check on them during the night.
But scientists say they have now developed a blood test which can reveal the truth about a child’s sleeping habits.
Children should get between 12 and nine hours sleep every night, depending on their age and declining steadily from the age of three, until they are 16, according to the NHS (stock image)
Researchers at the Institute of Food Sciences of the National Research Council in Italy created the test.
It works by picking up on molecules in the blood called microRNAs. MicroRNAs control which genes are most active in someone’s body.
Scientists saw significant changes in the numbers of certain microRNAs, depending on how much sleep someone had had. It was not clear at what times the microRNAs were tested.
Looking at levels of two different microRNAs allowed them to differentiate between children who did or didn’t sleep for nine hours a day.
For one microRNA, called miR-26b-3p, average levels were 15 per cent higher in the blood of children who did get enough sleep.
And for another, called miR-485-5p, levels were 50 per cent higher in the children with healthy sleep patterns, on average.
Fabio Laura, one of the authors of the study, said: ‘Our findings show for the first time that the sleep duration reflects the profile of specific circulating microRNAs in school-aged children and adolescents.
‘This could allow clinicians to easily determine if children are sleeping enough by using a simple blood test and use this as an indication of other aspects of their health.’
Mr Laura and colleagues tested their theory on 111 children and teenagers from Spain, Italy, Cyprus, Germany, Belgium, Estonia, Hungary and Sweden.
They found they could group them into ‘short sleepers’ – who had fewer than eight hours per night as a teenager or nine hours as a child – and ‘normal sleepers’, who did get those amounts of sleep.
According to the NHS, children should get 12 hours sleep per night at the age of three and then progressively less – reducing by about 15 minutes per year – down to nine hours at the ages of 14, 15 and 16.
Over-16s should get between seven and nine hours each night.
The Italian researchers found their blood tests still worked regardless of a child’s home country, sex, puberty status or how much time they spent looking at screens.
The research was published in the journal Experimental Physiology.