Diferenças sexuais no padrão de sono, JETLAG social e atenção de adolescentes

Abstract

Insufficient sleep and irregular sleep-wake cycle are common problems for adolescents, who suffer a phase delay in sleep due to biological and social changes associated with the arising of puberty, resulting in later sleep times. However, morning class start time shorten sleep time on weekdays for having to wake up earlier, leading to sleep compensation on weekend. This condition is associated with irregular sleep times and is detrimental to cognitive performance. This condition may be worse in girls due to greater sleep need and less resistance to sleep deprivation. In this work, we evaluated sex differences in relation to sleep patterns, social jetlag and attention in high school adolescents enrolled in morning classes, with the participation of 207 students of both sexes (F: 133 - 15 ± 0.9 years; M: 74 - 16 ± 0.9 years). The participants completed the questionnaires “Health and sleep”, the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, and then the sleep diary for 10 days, recording sleep times, and sleepiness upon awakening on the Maldonado Sleepiness Scale. For the attentional assessment, the participants executed the Continuous Performance Task. GLM analysis were performed to evaluate the relation between sex and chronotype (control variable) predicting sleep times, time in bed, sleepiness upon awakening, irregularity in sleep times, social jetlag, irregularity in time in bed and attention, as well as irregularity in sleep times, social jetlag and irregularity in time in bed predicting attention. In general, the girls spent more time in bed and got up later on weekend (Anova, p <0.01), tended to have greater irregularity in get up time (Anova, p = 0.07) and obtained the highest proportion of poor sleep quality (X², p <0.01). The sexes did not differ in relation to bedtime and get up time, time in bed during weekdays, irregularity in bedtimes, social jetlag, irregularity in time in bed, sleep quality score and sleepiness upon awakening (Anova, p> 0, 05). The girls had the longest reaction time in phasic alertness (Anova, p <0.05), while in the GLM, there was observed a week relation with sex predicting a tendency for girls to have longer reaction time (B = 29.8; p = 0.06), but a higher percentage of correct responses in phasic alertness (B = 3.440; p = 0.09). Therefore, it is suggested that girls have greater sleep compensation on weekend, reflecting less resistance to sleep deprivation during weekdays. Besides that, girls presented longer reaction time in one of the components of attention. On the other hand, due to GLM have showed only a trend of weak relations with small effect size of the sex predicting attention, it is suggested that further studies should be conducted in a larger sample size with more balance between sexes for the analysis of these relations.