Poor sleep persists among African Americans after chronic rhinosinusitis treatment
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African American patients with chronic rhinosinusitis had worse sleep quality even after treatment compared with their white counterparts, according to results of a prospective cohort study.
“Chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) has been associated with poor sleep quality, which has been shown to improve following medical and/or surgical management,” Evelyn Konsur, MD, an allergy and immunology fellow physician at Rush University Medical Center, told Healio. “Our large prospective cohort study was prompted by our previous studies that have shown that African American patients with CRS are at higher risk for obstructive sleep apnea and sleep disruption as measured by the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index. Our aim in this study was to assess whether African American and white [patients] have different responses in terms of their sleep after CRS treatment with medical and/or surgical management.”
Researchers evaluated data of 1,136 patients with CRS — 235 of whom where African American and 615 of whom were white — who completed five Likert scale questions prior to and following CRS treatment, which researchers used to calculate their sleep domain scores.
The two groups showed no difference in baseline mean Sino-Nasal Outcome Test-22 results, suggesting CRS severity did not differ between African American and white patients (21.63 ± 28.15 vs. 23.15 ± 24.67).
Mean follow-up was 2.3 years.
The results, presented at the American College of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology Annual Scientific Meeting, showed African American patients had a higher baseline mean sleep domain score, indicating worse sleep quality, at 10.82 ± 9.3 compared with 9.18 ± 7.4 among their white counterparts (P = .042).
Although improvement in sleep quality was observed in both groups after treatment, African Americans still maintained higher sleep domain scores than white patients, even after adjusting for initial scores (7.02 ± 8.46 vs. 5.39 ± 6.32; P = .012).
“Our results indicate that African American patients with CRS have more severe disease after treatment of CRS and worse sleep quality before and after disease treatment compared with white [patients],” Konsur said.
“Further research to determine the contributing factors and causes of more severe sleep disruption in African American patients with CRS is our future goal,” she added. “We hypothesize that socioeconomic conditions hindering proper follow-up and suboptimal management for CRS can affect overall disease severity and ultimately circadian rhythm and sleep quality.”