Sleep patterns in children and adolescents with functional recurrent abdominal pain: objective versus subjective assessment

Abstract

To document objective sleep patterns of children and adolescents with functional recurrent abdominal pain (RAP), and to compare them with subjective sleep assessments and sleep patterns of healthy controls. Subjective sleep reports and sleep habit assessments were obtained from 25 adolescents with functional RAP and from 15 age- and gender-matched healthy volunteers, and were compared with continuous movement monitoring using the Actigraph for 7 consecutive days. Abdominal pain before falling asleep was a unanimous complaint in the RAP group, with 29% reporting awakening from sleep by the pain. Only 25% of RAP patients assessed their sleep quality as good, compared with 87% of the control group. Objective sleep patterns measurements of the RAP patients were similar to those of the control group as well as to measurements observed in a large population of school-aged children and adolescents. This study of a small group of children and adolescents with functional RAP provides objective evidence that their sleep patterns do not differ from those of normal peers, despite their subjective complaints.