DENVER – Poor sleep quality and shorter sleep duration in boys at age 11 years is associated with subsequent accelerated use and misuse of alcohol and cannabis during adolescence and emerging adulthood, Thomas B. Mike reported at the annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies.
This association has been reported before in cross-sectional studies. But Mr. Mike presented new findings from the longitudinal prospective Pitt Mother and Child Project.
Bruce Jancin/Frontline Medical News
Thomas B. Mike
The study comprised 170 boys aged 11 years whose mothers filled out the Child Sleep Questionnaire, modified for pediatric use from the well known Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index. At that time, the boys also were assessed for internalizing and externalizing behaviors, neighborhood dangerousness, and socioeconomic status – all of which are factors known to influence teen substance use.
When participants reached ages 20 and 22 years, they underwent detailed interviews including assessment via the validated Lifetime Drinking History and Lifetime Drug History questionnaires.
In a multivariate Cox regression analysis controlling for a history of child internalizing and externalizing problem behavior as well as socioeconomic factors, every hour of sleep duration less than 9.5 hours at age 11 years was associated with a 21% acceleration in the time to first use of alcohol and a 22% acceleration in first use of cannabis, reported Mr. Mike, a medical student at the University of Pittsburgh.
Moreover, every 1 point worse score for sleep quality on the Child Sleep Questionnaire, scored from 0 (best) to 21 (worst), was associated with a 9% acceleration in time to alcohol use and an 8% acceleration to cannabis use.
Subjects with poor sleep duration and quality as 11-year-olds by parental report also experienced intoxication at a younger age than did those who had been better sleepers at that age. And they reported more frequent use of alcohol and cannabis during adolescence.
In an interview, Mr. Mike, who is planning a career in pediatrics, said the study findings contain an important message for pediatricians and family physicians when they meet with the parents of young boys entering adolescence.
“Probably the biggest take-home message is, ‘sleep more, sleep better.’ We don’t have a lot of ways to intervene right now for kids who have poor sleep, but we know based on this and other studies that kids who don’t sleep enough are more likely to use drugs and more likely to engage in other risky behaviors. So any way the parents can intervene will help, perhaps by getting them to bed earlier or trying to get them on a more regular schedule. At a social policy level, having school start later would probably be the most effective measure, but that probably won’t happen for a very long time,” he said.
“The vast majority of people who end up addicted to drugs later in life started when they were kids, so any way we can reduce adolescent substance use should have a downstream effect, including a decreased total substance use burden,” Mr. Mike added.
Possible mechanisms for the observed longitudinal association between poor quality and duration of sleep at age 11 years and earlier and heavier use of alcohol and cannabis later in adolescence include attempted self-medication for sleep problems, reward regulation, and alterations in brain chemistry, making the boys more susceptible to using drugs later in life, perhaps because they obtain a bigger high than their peers do. The investigators plan to delve deeper into the role of self-regulation and mental health as possible mechanisms linking childhood sleep and later substance use, he said.
The Pitt Mother and Child Project is supported by the National Institutes of Health. Mr. Mike reported having no financial conflicts.