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Seema Rani, MD: Examining Sleep Health in Youth With SCD
Rani discussed an in-depth study examining quality of sleep and quality of life in children and adolescents with SCD.
Children and adolescents with sickle cell disease (SCD) in their baseline state of health had overall similar sleep quality and hygiene when compared to healthy youth without chronic illness, although these children had increased impairment related to sleep and worse health-related quality of life compared to controls.
This research was presented at the 66th American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting and Exposition, held December 7-10, 2024, in San Diego, California, by Seema Rani, MD, pediatric pulmonary and sleep physician, Nemours Childrens’ Health.
“[This research] definitely adds to the literature that maybe children with SCD who are at their baseline state of health, do sleep well and there is poor quality of life seen in this population. So hopefully, larger studies… and maybe more longitudinal studies, and doing more objective testing like polysomnography, will help us more get objective data,” Rani told HCPLive® during the meeting.
Rani and colleagues found that children with SCD reported higher sleep-related impairment (PROMIS SRI M=54.9, SD 8.4) than controls (M=50.3; SD 8.5, P = .03) and worse sleep hygiene (CSHS M=19.27) than control children (M=21.35; P = .05). While they found no differences between groups in daytime sleepiness (ESS-CHAD, P = .1), 38% of youth with SCD had increased daytime sleepiness compared to 28% of the control group. There was also a trend towards higher risk for sleep-disordered breathing among youth with SCD (P =.06). These participants also reported worse overall health-related quality of life (PedsQL M=48.3) than controls (M=55.7, P =.02).
“We should just all be asking about sleep in this population, whether it's just how they breathe while sleeping, but also how they sleep, whether they feel refreshed and how they're you know, how they function in the school and all those things,” Rani emphasized.
