Sleep, snoring and smoking in high school students.

The relationship between snoring, sleep and smoking was investigated in young students from a survey by self-administered questionnaire on sleep habits, conducted in high schools in the educational district of Lyons (France). Our sample consisted of 11,417 boys and 13,265 girls between 15 and 20 years of age. We found that 28.4% of girls and 38.8% of boys reported that they snored. In both sexes, snoring was associated with short (<7 h) and long (>10 h) sleep length, nocturnal awakenings and daytime sleepiness. Smoking was a risk factor for snoring. Multiple logistic regression showed that the odds-ratio for habitual snoring increased when tobacco consumption increased from a 1.30 (moderate smokers) to 2.26 (heavy smokers) in girls and from 1.38 to 2.09 in boys. This dose-effect relationship between smoking and snoring suggests that a substantial proportion of snoring cases is attributable to tobacco consumption in young students.