Teenagers who regularly do not get enough sleep are more likely to struggle academically, the results of a new study show.

Swedish researchers looked at over 20,000 teenagers aged between 12 and 19 and found that those who regularly slept for less than seven hours per night were more likely to fail in school.

Teenagers were also more likely to risk failure at school if they suffered with sleep disturbance.

According to the researchers from Uppsala University, the findings suggest that sleep has a key role to play when it comes to a young person's performance at school.

"Another important finding of our study is that around 30% of the adolescents reported regular sleep problems. Similar observations have been made in other adolescent cohorts, indicating that sleep problems among adolescents have reached an epidemic level in our modern societies," they added.

Details of these findings are published in the journal, Sleep Medicine.