Sleep Duration and the Prevalence of Metabolic Syndrome in adolescents and children: a Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

ObjectivePrevious studies discussing the association between sleep duration and the prevalence of metabolic syndrome have reported different results, most of which targeted at adults. We are devoted to investigating the effects of sleep time for metabolic syndrome in children conducting a meta-analysis. MethodsSeveral cross-sectional studies were retrieved from Pubmed, Ovid, Cochrane, and Embase from inception to October 2021. Fixed-effect models and random-effect models were used to analyze the effects of sleep time on metabolic syndrome in adolescents based on the research above. ResultsWe collected data from 10 cross-sectional studies including 15877 children. Using random-effect models, compared with normal sleep time, we found out that both relatively short (OR = 0.81, 95%CI = 0.55-1.07, I-squared = 45.6%, p = 0.075) and long (OR = 0.86, 95%CI = 0.54-1.19, I-squared = 67.8%, p = 0.003) sleep durations were not associated with high prevalence of metabolic syndrome in adolescents and children. Using fixed-effect model on short sleep duration and it turned out to be statistically significant (OR = 0.76, 95%CI = 0.59-0.93). ConclusionsLong sleep duration made no significant difference in the risk of metabolic syndrome in adolescents and children, while short sleep duration seems to be a protective factor. Further studies are required to establish whether the association is causal and modifiable.