Abstract
Objective:
To examine associations between serum micronutrients and neurobehavioral function and the mediating role of sleep quality in early adolescents.
Design:
In this cross-sectional study, peripheral blood samples were analyzed for iron and zinc levels. The Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index and Penn Computerized Neurocognitive Battery were used to assess sleep quality and neurobehavioral function, respectively. The generalized linear regressions (bootstrap) were performed to estimate the associations.
Setting:
Jintan, China
Participants:
226 adolescents (106 females) from the Jintan Child Cohort study.
Results:
Adolescents with low iron (< 75 ug/dl) (OR=1.29, p=0.04) and low zinc (< 70 ug/dl) (OR=1.58, p<0.001) were associated with increased odds for poor sleep quality. Adolescents with low iron and zinc were associated with fast (Iron: β=−1353.71, p=0.002, zinc: β=−2262.01, p=0.02) but less-accurate (Iron: β=−0.97, p=0.04; zinc: β=−1.76, p=0.04) performance on nonverbal reasoning task and poor sleep quality partially mediated the associations between low iron/zinc and nonverbal reasoning (p<0.05). Additionally, low iron was associated with a slower reaction on spatial processing task (β=276.94, p=0.04), and low zinc was associated with fast (β=−1781.83, p=0.03) but error-prone performance (β=−1.79, p=0.04) on spatial processing ability and slower reaction speed (β=12.82, p=0.03) on the attention task. We observed similar trends using a cutoff point of 75 ug/dl for low serum zinc, except for the association with attention task speed (p>0.05).
Conclusion:
Iron and zinc deficiencies may possibly be associated with poor sleep and neurobehavioral function among early adolescents. Poor sleep may partially mediate the relationship between micronutrients and neurobehavioral function.
Behavioral and Neural Aspects of the Spatial Processing of Conspecifics in the Electrosensory System
