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Early childhood sleep quality in a pediatric cohort: sex-specific differences

Sonali Bose1,2, Kristie R Ross3,4, Xin Zheng5

  • 1Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine, Department of Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, United States.

Frontiers in Sleep
|December 22, 2025
PubMed

Insights

Poor sleep health is common in early childhood and affects boys more than girls. These findings highlight early sex-based sleep disparities that require intervention to prevent long-term health issues.

Area of Science:

  • Pediatric Sleep Medicine
  • Child Development
  • Sex Differences in Health

Background:

  • Childhood sleep health significantly impacts lifelong physical, cognitive, and behavioral outcomes.
  • Sleep problems and sex-based differences in early childhood sleep are not well understood.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To objectively assess sleep health in early childhood.
  • To investigate sex-specific differences in sleep patterns among young children.

Main Methods:

  • Utilized actigraphy for 7 days and polysomnography (PSG) for a subset of 336 children in the PRogramming of Intergenerational Stress Mechanisms (PRISM) cohort.
  • Analyzed sleep parameters using descriptive statistics and Wilcoxon Rank Sum tests to compare boys and girls.

Main Results:

  • Children exhibited low average sleep duration and sleep efficiency, with elevated wake after sleep onset (WASO).
  • Boys experienced significantly more restless and fragmented sleep compared to girls, as indicated by both actigraphy and PSG.
  • Sleep disordered breathing events were infrequent in the cohort.

Conclusions:

  • Clinically significant sleep disturbances are prevalent in this pediatric cohort and are more severe in boys.
  • Early identification and intervention for sex-based sleep disparities are crucial to mitigate lifelong health consequences.
Abstract

Keywords:
actigraphychildpolysomnographysexsleep

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