Heart Hormone Elevated in Children Who Wet Bed

Snoring also related to problem, researchers report

By Serena Gordon
HealthDay Reporter

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MONDAY, May 5 (HealthDay News) -- Children who wet their beds frequently have elevated levels of a heart hormone that helps regulate levels of fluid around the heart, a new study finds.

Additionally, children who habitually snore are about three times as likely to wet the bed as children who don't snore, but the severity of snoring appears to have little effect on the risk of bed-wetting, according to the research, which is published in the May issue of Pediatrics.

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"Our findings were really an eye-opener," said study co-author Dr. David Gozal, director of the division of pediatric sleep medicine at the University of Louisville, in Kentucky. "Why children with bed-wetting have high levels of this hormone; that will require a bit more research."

About 9 percent of boys and 6 percent of girls at age 7 have trouble sleeping through the night without wetting the bed, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health. The problem -- which affects about 5 million American children -- runs strongly in families. Nighttime bed-wetting, which is also called enuresis, is not the fault of the child or parent. For some reason, the child's brain isn't responding to normal cues to wake up and empty the bladder.

Because so many children who snore seem to also wet the bed, Gozal and his colleagues wanted to investigate the connection between the two problems.

The researchers reviewed almost 18,000 surveys completed by parents of 5- to 7-year-old children to see how many were habitual snorers or had problems with enuresis. From that group, they found that 1,976 children -- about 11 percent -- were habitual snorers. Fifty-three percent of those with habitual snoring were boys. About 27 percent of that group also wet the bed. Nearly 90 percent of those who wet the bed were boys. Among non-snoring children, just 11.6 percent wet the bed. As with the snoring group, almost 90 percent of those with enuresis were boys.

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