Sleep Duration and Metabolic Syndrome among Early Adolescents—A Cross-Sectional Study in Khartoum State, Sudan
, Aziza I. G. Mukhayer 3,4, Mohamed E. Moukhyer 5,6, Rama M. Chandika 1 and Stef P. J. Kremers 2,3Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The reviewer thank the authors for their effort. however some points in the manuscript should be more explained especially in the methodolgy dection.
consider taking into consideration my comments:
In the text title , the reviewer suggest adding « obese adolescents » after « among»
the present study aimed to assess the association between sleep duration and metabolic syndrome among early adolescents in Sudan
results showed that Short sleep duration was significantly associated with overweight/obesity in the total population and with low HDL-C in boys and high triglycerides in girls. In addition, weight status was found to be significantly associated with short sleep.
Line 100 : this question in the survey seems a little strenge « how long they usually slept during the night in the past six months. » do authors think that it is easy for young from primary school remembering how long they sleep if they were not advised for this from before.
Line 115-117 : authors wrote this « After removal of 115 participants with missing information, 921 early adolescents aged 10-15 years were included in the study. » a little bit far i twas mentioned that participants were from primary schools . it means that the age is not higher than 13 years, can authors provide more information relating to this point ?
Line 143 and far : for the biochemical analysis , what are the coefficients of variations ?
The methodology section is not clear enough, authors are requested to be more accurate in the different measures
Line 238-239 : Authors mentioned that in «The present study found that the early adolescents aged 10-15 years whose fathers’ education was at university or postgraduate levels had a high risk of short sleep ». This result should be more discussed because habitually fathers when they understand the consequences of short sleep they intervene with their children.
In the acknowledgements : consider changing « students » by schoolchildren
This phrase should be deleted « as well as all those who contributed to making this work a success. »
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you for your valuable comments and suggestions.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.doc
Reviewer 2 Report
This is a well-written article describing an association between sleep duration and metabolic syndrome including overweight probably for the first time among early adolescents in Africa. The purpose was clear, study design was well-organized and the discussion on results was adequate. In order to make further studies sophisticated, a reviewer would like to ask authors several issues. The first one is the difference of sleep duration between school-days (weekdays) and non-school-days (weekends). Weekend catch-up sleep is a matter of concern among doctors or teachers surrounding adolescents. The second one is sleepiness or restorative sleep. Since optimal sleep duration has a marked interindividual variation, sleep duration may be insufficient to assess effect of sleep on each pupils. Although sleepiness or restorative sleep are subjective issues, these parameters are recently considered to be useful parameters to assess effects of sleep on each people. In the further studies, please add these points, and please mention something on these issues (catch-up sleep, sleepiness, restorative sleep) in the current paper.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you for your valuable comments and suggestions.
Author Response File: Author Response.doc
