Fig. 1.

Study design. We recruited a total of 19 female participants, comprising 10 healthy individuals and 9 patients with OSA from the Black population. The age range of the participants was between 3 and 11 years, with a BMI z-score ≤2.6. Participant selection was based on the results of a pediatric sleep questionnaire, a secondhand smoke exposure questionnaire, and/or a sleep study. Polysomnography was employed to measure various sleep parameters, including sleep efficiency, total sleep time, and severity of OSA among the patient group. Salivary samples were collected from all participants, and DNA and RNA were extracted for subsequent whole-genome bi-sulfite and RNA sequencing analysis. This figure was created with BioRender.com.