PITTSBURGH -- Can trouble sleeping affect an asthmatic’s condition? Can it cause someone to develop the symptoms of attention deficit disorder?

New research says both are true.

Researchers at the big lung and critical care medicine meeting say that lack of sleep can play a role in both the day and night symptoms of asthma, and that sleep problems ranging from simple insomnia to sleep apnea can cause someone to have attention deficit disorder.

“You seem short of breath and it gets worse and worse and then suddenly you can’t breathe. It’s like somebody strangling you.” Mary Kane has asthma.

But her problems may not be limited to just breathing.

New research presented at the American College of Chest Physician’s Annual Meeting shows asthmatics on the whole suffer significant sleep quality disturbances, and in turn, end up being sleepy during the daytime.

“So we have 487 patients, which I believe makes it the, of not one of the largest trials to look at sleep and asthma. And we found that their sleep is pretty bad. A full 30 percent of them categorize their sleep as poor or bad,” says Dr. John Mastronarde, study researcher at Ohio State University.

50 percent of the patients studied reported waking up every night more than three times a week. The sleep disturbances translated into daytime sleepiness.

“We know from previous data in the literature that that has a significant consequences for public health, folks who are sleepy in the day have a high risk for car accidents, poor performance at work, etc,” Mastronarde states.

There is also a chicken-egg scenario, in that the researchers found that not only does asthma create bad sleep, but that bad sleep in and of itself can worsen an asthmatic’s breathing.

“We saw if your sleep is worse and then it gets better we saw that your overall quality of asthma got better as well,” says Mastronarde.

Other research presented shows those with sleep apnea, a condition where a person stops breathing hundreds of times a night, can develop have a worsening of attention deficit disorder.

Of the patients studied with moderate to severe attention problems, 60 percent had their ADHD resolved after being placed on CPAP. The researchers believe that it doesn’t just apply to sleep apnea, that any sleep problem can create ADHD-type symptoms.

Dr. Clifford Risk, the author of the study from the Marlboro Center for Sleep Disorders, says, “If they have ADHD the doctor should be asking them how their sleep is, do you snore or have sleep apnea, b-do you have insomnia at night?”

ADD symptoms were seen in patients with sleep apnea who had no prior history or evidence of ADD, meaning, the daytime sleepiness can actually cause add type symptoms.