Sleepwalking into adolescence: parasomnias tend to persist past childhood

Childhood parasomnias like sleepwalking or bedwetting don’t necessarily stop at adolescence. The remission rates for these pediatric problems are actually quite low heading into the teenage years.

The research abstract (#251), presented as a poster today at SLEEP 2010, compared parasomnias incidents rates for children ages 6 to 11 over the course of less than five years.

The children’s parents completed comprehensive sleep habits surveys at the beginning and end points of the study.

Results show the remission rate for children with sleepwalking was only 1.9 percent after five years. Remission rates remained low for bedwetting (5.2 percent), sleep terrors (4.8 percent) and sleep talking (3.5).

Sleep talking was the most common parasomnia for adolescents. 22.3 percent of parents reported their child talked in his or her sleep. 15.2 percent of those cases were new.

The incidence rate was 2.6 percent for new cases of sleep terrors, and less than one percent for both bedwetting and sleepwalking.

Learn more about sleepwalking. bedwetting and nightmares at sleepeducation.com