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Table 1 Association between sleep duration and adiposity in children aged 0–4 years

From: Systematic review of the relationships between sleep duration and health indicators in the early years (0–4 years)

No of studies

Design

Quality Assessment

No of participants

Absolute effect

Quality

Risk of bias

Inconsistency

Indirectness

Imprecision

Other

Mean age ranged between 0 and 4.9 years. Data were collected cross-sectionally and up to 9.5 years of follow-up. Sleep duration was assessed by actigraphy or parent report. Adiposity was assessed objectively as body weight, body mass index (absolute, z-score or percentile), waist-for-length ratio, weight status (different definitions for underweight, normal weight, overweight, obese) or % body fat/fat mass/fat mass index (bioelectrical impedance, dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry, skinfolds).

13

Longitudinal studya

No serious risk of bias

No serious inconsistency

No serious indirectness

No serious imprecision

None

31,482

Out of 13 longitudinal analyses, 10 reported a significant association between shorter sleep duration and adiposity gain [17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26], 2 reported null findings [27, 28], and 1 reported that longer sleep duration predicted adiposity gain [29].

LOW

18

Cross-sectional studyb

No serious risk of bias

No serious inconsistency

No serious indirectness

No serious imprecision

None

30,829

Out of 18 cross-sectional analyses, 10 reported a significant association between shorter sleep duration and adiposity [23, 26, 30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37], 7 reported null findings [24, 25, 27, 28, 38,39,40], and 1 reported that sleep duration was positively associated with BMI z-scores [41].

LOW

  1. Due to heterogeneity in the measurement of sleep and adiposity, a meta-analysis was not possible
  2. aIncludes 13 longitudinal studies [17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29]
  3. bIncludes 18 cross-sectional studies [23,24,25,26,27,28, 30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41]