Let's Give Parents the Power of a Second Opinion!
Aww, snoring kids? Actually, it’s not so cute. It’s estimated that 3.5 MILLION kids may have pediatric Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA), a serious sleep disorder that causes kids to briefly stop breathing numerous times during the night. In children, the symptoms of OSA are often mistaken for ADHD, leading to unnecessary treatment and medication.
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Left undiagnosed, OSA can cause obesity, diabetes, hypertension, anxiety and depression. The goods news: OSA is easily treatable. The bad news: diagnosing OSA requires an expensive, inconvenient and uncomfortable overnight sleep study. And many families can’t afford and don’t have access to a sleep lab.
But there is a better way to diagnose OSA without wires and without kids trying to sleep in a strange place. We call it the Easy Peezy Pee Test! Very simply, this simple, cost-effective and easy-to-use test identifies four key proteins in a child’s urine that are linked to pediatric Obstructive Sleep Apnea.
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We’ve completed the first round of development and lab testing and we’re super excited because our results show the Easy Peezy Pee Test is over 96.5% accurate! But before we can make this test available to doctors, parents and kids, we need to complete another round of validation testing.
Help fund the
Easy Peezy Pee Test. Here’s what your contribution will do:
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Thank you for helping to make better sleep Easy Peezy!
Why These Moms Support Easy Peezy:
Amy discusses the process her daughter went through to get an ADD diagnosis at eight years old. When she heard about the Easy Peezy Pee Test, she thought, "Where was this back then!"
Kristen chose to have her then two year old's tonsils and adenoids removed rather than go through an overnight sleep test. To remove this uncertainty and have an at-home test, she encourages parents to support the Easy Peezy Pee Test!
A Growing Problem For Our Kids
Our company is focused on a growing problem that affects our children’s health and
behavior: Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA).
OSA is a dangerous condition in which there are brief
pauses in your child's breathing pattern during sleep. Breathing stops because
the airway collapses, blocking the flow of oxygen for short periods of
time. In severe sleep apnea, these
pauses can occur hundreds of times a night.
This results in a poor
quality of sleep, but what makes it so important is that the decrease in oxygen
during sleep can lead to other health problems, such as increased blood
pressure and insulin resistance.
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Children and adolescents
with OSA are sick more of the time than kids without OSA, including reports of
infections, asthma or respiratory ailments, nervous conditions, and stomach or
intestinal issues. OSA has been linked
to increased child obesity, depression, and bed-wetting.
Interrupted
sleep frequently leads to other symptoms – such as fatigue, irritability,
hyperactivity, inattentiveness, and an inability to concentrate – all of which
can deprive a child of good grades.
In
fact, there is now evidence from two university studies showing that OSA causes
brain disturbances in children, which are responsible for attention, learning,
and memory deficits, as well as the inability to control emotion and behavior.
If left undetected and
untreated, OSA can lead to high blood pressure and higher risks of diabetes or
heart disease as children grow into adults.
The good news is that
treating OSA in children – usually with tonsil and adenoid surgery – reverses
these problems.
Can Sleep Apnea Be Confused With ADHD?
Did
you know that as many as half of the seven million children diagnosed with ADHD may
actually have sleep apnea?
Sleep
deficit in children can cause behavior and attention problems that mimic ADHD,
and recent published research has shown that OSA can lead to ADHD or be
confused with ADHD:
-
A study at the University of Arizona found that
persistent OSA causes impairment of behavior and social functioning.
- Brain imaging studies at the University of Colorado have
shown that OSA causes irregularities in parts of the brain that are responsible
for attention and memory.
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However, research has shown that treating the
OSA can improve behavior and restore cognitive function without resorting to
drugs.
If your child has difficulty concentrating or is
hyperactive in school, wouldn’t you want to know if these were the result of
sleep apnea before starting them on controlled drugs?
50% of children diagnosed
with ADHD show symptom and behavior improvement after treatment for OSA!
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How Do We Know If Our Kids Have OSA?
The most common symptom
of OSA is loud, frequent snoring, sometimes accompanied by gasping or choking
sounds. Snoring doesn’t always mean
there is sleep apnea, but it can mask the problem or even confuse diagnosis by
a physician.
More
than 20 million children in America snore, which means they may be at risk for
OSA and may need to be tested.
Other common signs to
watch for are bed-wetting, frequent daytime sleepiness or irritability,
difficulty paying attention, or behavior and performance problems in
school.
Normally,
if your doctor suspects sleep apnea, he will send your child to a sleep lab for
a polysomnography test (PSG). This can
be an uncomfortable and frightening experience for children. (Adults don’t like
it either.)
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In
a sleep lab, the child has dozens of wires glued to their head and body as they
are hooked up to monitoring equipment. It is difficult for them to sleep in a
strange environment with all these attachments and with strangers (technicians)
watching them. The test can be expensive
– $1500 to $3000 per night – and there may be a long waiting period, as most
sleep labs do not conduct tests on children.
The Difficulty Diagnosing OSA In Kids
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(Photo Credit)
Three Big Reasons:
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How Is The Easy Peezy Test Different?
NuSomnea has developed a revolutionary test to search for four specific proteins
in a child’s urine.
A
clinical study with 120 children showed that when these proteins are measured
at certain levels, the test is highly accurate – over 96% specific for
detecting OSA.
So
instead of enduring a night in a strange bed, hooked up to all sorts of
equipment in a sleep lab, your child sleeps normally in his or her own bed,
with no wires or machines to disturb them.
Upon
waking, they simply pee in the specimen cup provided, which is then sealed and
placed in the special pre-paid mailer that NuSomnea will provide with the test.
The
kit is mailed back to a lab for analysis. Within three days of receiving the test, an accurate answer will be provided to your child’s doctor. You
will know whether your child has OSA and can discuss appropriate treatment.
Testing
for OSA in kids can be just that simple, and at a fraction of the cost of a
sleep lab study!
Why We Need Your Help
Your
help with our campaign is vital. Right
now we are at a crossroads. We have completed a preliminary study showing that
our test has a
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We
need to raise $100,000 to finish the assay development and conduct a validation
study, which will ensure that the test is as efficient and affordable as
possible for parents whose children snore or have been diagnosed with
ADHD.
Help
us help our kids get a good night’s sleep!
Easy Peezy Perks!
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About Us
The team at NuSomnea believes that OSA is a dangerous
and costly disease for adults and children. We have seen first-hand the toll that OSA can take, and we are
passionately committed to finding better ways to identify people at risk for
OSA and to motivate them to seek treatment.
Mike Thomas, our founder, has been at
the forefront of innovation in both sleep lab and home sleep testing over the
years. Now we believe we have found an
exciting advancement for the detection of Sleep Apnea in children. We need your support to take the next step in
making this product available!
