Project Description

Challenge

Upward of 90 percent of children with neurodevelopmental disabilities (NDDs) have sleep issues, compared to just a quarter of typically developing children. The toll on their well-being—and their families’ quality of life—can be severe.

Project Summary

In 2013, ASD investigators affiliated with KBHN teamed up to guide the national research agenda on this issue, in partnership with sleep experts and organizations such as the Children’s Sleep Network.  Building sleep-research capacity within  KBHN set the stage for allowing trainees interested in the topic to receive mentorship from across its disorder-based projects.

For its part, the ASD Demonstration Project team began by looking into the relationships between sleep problems, behavioural problems and parental stress. They measured these variables in a subset of children from the Pathways in ASD study cohort, a group that KBHN investigators continue to follow to this day to learn about the factors that influence how kids with autism grow and develop. They correlated sleep concerns with stressed parents and with emotional-behavioural symptoms in the child—including “internalizing symptoms” such as sadness or anxiety and “externalizing symptoms” such as aggressive actions.

Result

No conclusions could yet be drawn about the direction of the causality (if any), but detecting the correlation was a useful step toward the following goals:

  • Understanding why children with NDDs are disproportionately affected by sleep issues
  • Describing the impact of this comorbidity, to make a case for putting resources toward researching and addressing it
  • Managing drug-based treatments responsibly and designing effective non-pharmaceutical interventions so that more children can get the good night’s sleep they need to feel and function their best

Team

Investigators

Project Leaders

Lonnie Zwaigenbaum, University of Alberta
Stephen Scherer, University of Toronto

Co-Investigators

Peter Szatmari, McMaster University
Eric Fombonne, McGill University
Michael Brudno, University of Toronto
Sal Carbonetto, McGill University
Anne Marie Craig, University of British Columbia
Krista L. Hyde, McGill University
Alan Evans, McGill University
Evdokia Anagnostou, University of Toronto
Geoff Hall, McMaster University
Susan Bryson, Dalhousie University
Isabel Smith, Dalhousie University
Wendy Roberts, University of Toronto
Jessica Brian, University of Toronto
Joanne Volden, University of Alberta
Pat Mirenda, University of British Columbia
Anthony Bailey, Warneford Hospital
Tracy Vaillancourt, University of Ottawa
Fiona Miller, University of Toronto
David Nicholas, University of Calgary
Bridget Fernandez, Memorial University

Collaborators

Andrew Paterson, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto
John Vincent, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
David Stellwagen, McGill University Health Centre
Margot Taylor, Holland-Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital, The Hospital for Sick Children, University of Toronto
Larry Tuff, McMaster Children’s Hospital, Hamilton Health Sciences
Eric Duku, McMaster University
Marc Woodbury-Smith, McMaster University
Mandi Steinman, Montreal Children’s Hospital
Keith Goulden, Glenrose Rehabilitation Hospital
Margaret Clarke, Child Development Centre, Calgary
Charlotte Waddell, Simon Fraser University
Veronica Smith, University of Alberta

Partners

Applied Biosystems
Illumina Inc.
DNA Genotek Inc.
NIH Autism Sequencing Consortium
Ontario Research Fund GL2 grant for autism genomics
Women and Children’s Health Research Institute
Sinneave Family Foundation
Autism Speaks Canada
Autism Research Training Program