Is Sleep Duration Associated With Childhood Obesity? A Systematic Review and Meta‐analysis

Obesity is a major public health epidemic worldwide in children and adults (1,2,3,4,5,6). The prevalence and severity of childhood obesity is dramatically increasing with a corresponding increase in the prevalence of obesity-related morbidities particularly those involving obstructive sleep apnea and metabolic and cardiovascular sequelae (7). Prevention of childhood obesity is an urgent issue for public health, in particular, in many industrialized countries and some transition societies. Nutrition and physical activity (PA) have been the major research focus on obesity prevention (8,9,10,11). However, most published findings of such interventions suggested little success in preventing childhood obesity…