Sleep-Related Disturbances Commonly Associated with Asthma

Asthma is one of the most prevalent chronic respiratory diseases in childhood. Morbidity remains high despite evidence-based guidelines for evaluation and treatment. Studies have shown that asthma negatively affects school attendance, school performance, and parent’s work attendance. Thus, its indirect and direct costs due to the burden of medical expenses are very high. Cough, dyspnea, and wheezing, common nocturnal symptoms in most asthmatics, can lead to sleep fragmentation and decreased quality of sleep in patients and their families. However, sleep disturbances can also be encountered in asthmatics with well-controlled symptoms. This implies that lack of awareness of asthma-sleep association and its clinical implications could lead to poor asthma control and to impaired daytime functioning. In addition, other medical conditions such as gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), obesity, and sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) often coexist with asthma. This is important for clinicians caring for individuals with either disease entity as available data suggest that untreated SDB is associated with uncontrolled asthma. Further research is needed to better elucidate the association between detection and treatment of comorbidities such as SDB and asthma control.