Investigating sleep architecture in Angelman, Cri du Chat and Cornelia de Lange syndromes.

Background: Little is known about sleep architecture in Angelman (AS), Cri du Chat (CdC) and Cornelia de Lange (CdLS) syndromes although sleep problems are commonly reported by parents of children with AS and CdC syndromes. Given the broad similarity of these syndromes we compared sleep architecture and parental reports of sleep problems across the syndromes. Method: Actigraph data were collected on children with AS, CdC or CdLS syndromes aged between 4 and 19 years (AS, mean age 6.67 years; CdC, mean age 9.13 years and CdLS, mean age 9.75 years) over 4 to 8 days (mean 6.4). Two children with AS were currently taking melatonin for sleep problems. A questionnaire regarding sleep (Simonds & Parraga, 1982) was completed by caregivers. Results: The CdLS group slept for longer than the AS and CdC groups (CdLS median: 8.31 hours, range: 7.1–9.3; AS median: 7.13 hours, range: 5.04–9.37; CdC median: 6.98 hours, range: 2.35–8.29) and showed less activity during the night than the AS and CdC groups (CdLS median: 18.79, range: 8.78–29.5; AS median: 38.15, range: 17.99–179.53; CdC median: 27.54, range: 15.63–358.11). Across the groups, 75% of parents reported that their child had a sleep problem and those children whose parents reported that they had sleep problems were awake for longer during the night than those without a sleep problem and this difference approached significance (U = 3.00, N = 12, p = 0.052). Parents of children with CdLS were less likely to report a sleeping problem than parents in the other two groups (CdLS: 33.3%, AS: 100%, CdC: 83.3%). Conclusion: Children with CdLS appear to demonstrate fewer sleep problems than children with AS and CdC and show consistent patterns of sleep within the group whilst the AS and CdC groups are noticeably more varied. Of clinical interest is the finding that two children with CdC were sleeping for a mean of 2.35 and 3.58 hours per night. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]