Relationship of sleep quality, baseline weight status, and weight-loss responsiveness in obese adolescents in an immersion treatment program

Abstract

Objective: The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of baseline sleep on baseline weight status and weight-loss responsiveness in obese adolescents.

Methods: Twenty-five obese adolescents who participated in a 19-day summer camp-based immersion treatment (IT) program completed pre-intervention measures of sleep duration and quality, and pre- and post-intervention body mass index z-scores (zBMI) and waist circumference (WC) assessments. Objective measures of sleep were obtained by actigraphy for a random subset of six participants for 1 week pre- and post-intervention.

Results: Shorter weekday sleep durations and more sleep debt were related to higher pre-intervention WCs (r = -0.54, p = 0.01 and r = -0.56, p = 0.01), and lower subjective sleep quality was related to higher pre-intervention zBMIs (r = -0.49, p = 0.02). Longer weekend sleep durations and more sleep debt were related to smaller reductions in pre- to post-intervention zBMIs (r = -0.47, p = 0.04 and r = -0.51, p = 0.03). For the subgroup of adolescents who wore actigraphs pre- and post-intervention, an increase in their sleep durations (d = -0.25) and a reduction in their sleep latencies (d = 0.52), zBMIs (d = 0.31), and WCs (d = 0.20) were observed.

Conclusions: These results provide further evidence linking poor sleep patterns and obesity in adolescence, and suggest that sleep patterns may impact the effectiveness of pediatric obesity interventions and that IT programs may improve sleep in obese adolescents. Overall, they provide support for addressing sleep problems as part of obesity interventions.

Keywords: Adolescents; Immersion treatment; Intervention; Obesity; Pediatrics; Sleep.