Takeaway
- Long and short sleep durations were associated with a modest but statistically significant increased risk of a composite of incident cardiovascular disease (CVD), cancer and mortality.
- Snoring, insomnia and narcolepsy were independently associated with increased risk of incident CVD.
Why this matters
- Authors encourage people to keep their sleep durations to 7-8 hours per day.
- Findings may support sleep medicine research to develop and promote sleep education to more people and contribute to a larger proportion of the population receiving knowledge on sleep hygiene to reduce the incidences of mortality and morbidity.
Study design
- A prospective cohort study of 407,500 participants from the UK Biobank.
- Associations of sleep duration and quality with incident CVD, cancer and mortality were evaluated.
- Funding: National Natural Science Foundation of China.
Key results
- Compared with a sleep duration of 7 hours, sleep durations of ≤5 hours and ≥9 hours were both associated with a significantly higher risk of :
- all-cause mortality (adjusted HR [aHR], 1.25; 95% CI, 1.16-1.34 and 1.30; 95% CI, 1.22-1.38, respectively);
- CVD mortality (aHR, 1.27; 95% CI, 1.09-1.49 and 1.32; 95% CI, 1.16-1.50, respectively); and
- CVD incidence (aHR, 1.23; 95% CI, 1.16-1.31 and 1.08; 95% CI, 1.02-1.15, respectively).
- Long sleep duration (≥9 hours) was associated with a higher risk of cancer mortality (aHR, 1.19; 95% CI, 1.10-1.30) and cancer incidence (aHR, 1.08; 95% CI, 1.04-1.12).
- CVD incidence was significantly associated with:
- snoring (aHR, 1.07; 95% CI, 1.04-1.11);
- insomnia (aHR, 1.26; 95% CI, 1.21-1.32); and
- narcolepsy (aHR, 1.20; 95% CI, 1.11-1.31).
Limitations
- The validity of self-reported snoring, insomnia and narcolepsy was not fully evaluated.
This clinical summary originally appeared on Univadis, part of the Medscape Professional Network.