Researchers in Canada have said that there is a genetic influence on sleepwalking and that parents who have been sleepwalkers in the past can expect their children to sleepwalk.
The new study that analysed sleep data from a group of 1,940 children through questionnaires involving topics including sleep terrors, sleepwalking, and parental sleepwalking found that more than 60 percent of children developed sleepwalking when both their parents were sleepwalkers.
Sleepwalking is a common childhood sleep disorder that usually disappears during adolescence, although it can persist or appear in adulthood.
Sleep terrors are another early childhood sleep disorder often characterised by a scream, intense fear and a prolonged period of inconsolability.
Children with one parent who was a sleepwalker had three times the odds of becoming a sleepwalker compared with children whose parents did not sleepwalk.
As per the results, children whose parents both had a history of sleepwalking had seven times the odds of becoming a sleepwalker.
“These findings point to a strong genetic influence on sleepwalking and, to a lesser degree, sleep terrors,” said Jacques Montplaisir from the Hopital du Sacre-Coeur de Montreal.
The authors found an overall childhood prevalence of sleep terrors (ages 1.5 to 13 years) of 56.2 per cent.
There was a high prevalence of sleep terrors (34.4 per cent) at 1.5 years of age but that prevalence decreased to 5.3 per cent at age 13.
“This effect may occur through polymorphisms in the genes involved in slow-wave sleep generation or sleep depth,” Montplaisir noted.
The study found that 47.4 per cent of children with one parent who was a sleepwalker developed sleepwalking while 61.5 per cent of children developed sleepwalking when both parents were sleepwalkers.
The study appeared online in the journal JAMA Paediatrics.
