Sleepwalking and Terrors Determined by DNA, Study Suggests

Sleep terrors during childhood can increase likelihood of children sleepwalking when older.

Sleep terror episodes can be equally frightening for both the child and parents as children often wake up screaming, crying and may not remember what happened or cannot recognize their parents immediately.

A study published in Journal of American Medical Association Pediatrics (JAMA Pediatrics) involved 1940 children born between 1997 and 1998 in Qubec who were studied over 12 years. Researchers found that a third of the children who experienced terrors during early childhood sleepwalked when they got older.

"These findings substantiate the strong familial aggregation for the parasomnias and lend support to the notion that sleepwalking and sleep terrors represent two manifestations of the same underlying pathophysiological entity," researchers wrote in the journal. The study found that peak age of incidence of sleep terrors was 1.5 years and it was 10 years for sleepwalking in the study group.

Interestingly, the study also found that risk of childhood sleepwalking was higher in children when parents had a history of sleepwalking. If one parent had a history of sleepwalking, the chance of the child sleepwalking increased to nearly 50 percent while it increased to 62 percent when both parents had sleepwalked as children.

"Moreover, parental history of sleepwalking predicted the incidence of sleep terrors in children as well as the persistent nature of sleep terrors," researchers wrote.