Background: Good sleep is essential for the growth and the development of children. However, sleep is often impaired in patients with atopic dermatitis (AD). It is important to assess the sleep quality in pediatric AD patients. For that purpose, we utilized actigraphy as an objective method for the assessment of sleep quality.
Methods: Childhood patients with AD (16 cases) and 8 non-allergic volunteers were recruited. Actiwatch (AW-64) was attached to each subject's wrist for 11 days at maximum. Sleep parameters were calculated with Actiware and compared among various patient groups.
Results: Results demonstrate that sleep was significantly compromised in patients with AD, according to the severity. Subjective scoring of the sleep quality by parents showed limited correlation with actigraphy.
Conclusion: Actigraphy is an objective and unobtrusive method to measure the sleep quality in childhood AD patients and can provide useful outcome in clinical trial.