- FRIDAY, Aug. 22 (HealthDay News) — Suffering respiratory or ear
infections in early childhood, having a dog in the house as a newborn, and
even being raised in a large family all appear to increase the risk of
snoring later in life, new research suggests.

The findings may seem incidental but, the study authors point out,
snoring has been linked with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease,
not to mention the obvious problems of sleep deprivation for those who
snore and those who have to listen.

“No one has studied this potential cause of snoring,” said Karl A.
Franklin, lead author of a study in the Aug. 22 issue of Respiratory
Research and an associate professor of respiratory medicine at
University Hospital in Umea, Sweden. “We found that early life infections,
recurrent otitis, having a dog as a newborn, and growing up in a larger
family was independent of each other and independent of other confounders
related to snoring in adulthood.”

Another expert, however, points to the study's weaknesses.

“The study has limitations,” said Dr. Raanan Arens, chief of
respiratory and sleep medicine at the Children's Hospital at Montefiore in
New York City. “This is a very general study based on a questionnaire that
simply was distributed to a large number of subjects. You could find
statistical significance; however, the meaning of this significance to the
clinical arena is unclear.”

According to background information in the study, some 16 percent of
middle-aged men and 7 percent of women snore habitually.

Often in snorers, the size of the upper airways is reduced. Snoring is
also a symptom of obstructive sleep apnea, when people actually stop
breathing briefly while asleep. Obesity, age, smoking and chronic
bronchitis all increase the risk of snoring.

Early life environment has been shown to impact a multitude of health
conditions later in life.

These authors randomly selected almost 16,000 men and women aged 25 to
54 in Denmark, Estonia, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, asking them to fill
out a questionnaire soliciting information on how often and how loudly
they snored in adulthood and environmental factors in their
childhoods.

Eighteen percent of respondents reported “loud and disturbing” snoring
at least three nights a week.

People who had been hospitalized for a respiratory infection before the
age of 2 were 27 percent more likely to be “habitual snorers.” Those who
suffered from recurrent otitis or ear infections as a child were 18
percent more likely to snore, growing up in a large family increased the
odds slightly, while having a dog at home as a newborn increased the odds
by 18 percent.

All of the same factors except household size were also linked with
combined snoring and daytime sleepiness.

“We speculate that all these factors could promote an enlargening of
tonsils with mouth breathing and a subsequent change of the mandibular
growth that could promote snoring in adulthood,” Franklin said. “Further
studies are needed.”

More information

The National Sleep Foundation has more on snoring.