Heritability of snoring

Interesting, in today's New York Times:

In the Genes: When the Littlest Family Member Snores, Too

Snoring may be genetic. Children who snore are almost three times as likely as others to have parents who snore. And snoring and sleep-disordered breathing are twice as common in children who test positive for allergies.

Sleep-disordered breathing — snoring is one symptom of it — is associated with poor school performance, cardiovascular troubles and daytime behavioral problems like attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Researchers studied 1-year-old children participating in the Cincinnati Childhood Allergy and Air Pollution Study. Among the 681 children, 105 were habitual snorers — that is, they snored more than three nights a week. The children were also examined for allergies to various foods and other substances using a skin-prick test.

Having a positive allergy test almost doubled the risk for snoring, and having one parent who snored almost tripled the risk. Being African-American more than tripled the risk that a child would be a habitual snorer. The results were published yesterday in the journal Chest.

"If you have a child who snores frequently or loudly," said Dr. Maninder Kalra, an author of the study, "we recommend evaluation by a sleep specialist." Treatment for sleep-disordered breathing in children may involve surgery to remove enlarged tonsils or adenoids, or the use of a breathing device during sleep. Dr. Kalra is an assistant professor of medicine at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center.

Sleep-disordered breathing can be definitively diagnosed only in a sleep laboratory, and the authors point out that one limitation of their study is that they did not perform this definitive test on each child. Further, the research relied on the reporting of parents, which may not have always been accurate.