Healthy sleep patterns may lower risk for HF
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Adults with healthy sleep patterns had lower risk for HF compared with adults with unhealthy sleep patterns, according to findings published in Circulation.
“There is evidence linking sleep behaviors with cardiovascular health. However, most of the previous studies only focused on individual sleep behaviors; in fact, various sleep behaviors are closely related to each other and would be considered together in evaluating the overall sleep pattern and quality,” Lu Qi, MD, PhD, FAHA, director of the Tulane University Obesity Research Center, told Healio. “We generated a new scoring method to assess the overall sleep pattern by combining several sleep behaviors and investigate its relation to heart failure in this study.”
In a prospective investigation, researchers analyzed 408,802 participants for the relationship between healthy sleep patterns and risk for HF. Researchers collected sleep behavior data via patient self-reporting and generated sleep scores by combining chronotype, sleep duration, insomnia, snoring and excessive daytime sleepiness. Healthy sleep patterns were defined as early chronotype, 7 to 8 hours of sleep per day, low reports of insomnia symptoms and no reports of snoring or excessive daytime sleepiness. Participants received 1 point for each criterion met. Higher scores indicated healthier sleep patterns.
During a median follow-up of 10.1 years, researchers reported 5,221 cases of HF and found a healthy sleep score was inversely associated with the incidence of HF; the HR for HF was 0.85 (95% CI, 0.83-0.87) for every 1-point increase in healthy sleep score. After adjusting for diabetes, hypertension, medication use, genetic variation and other covariates, participants with the healthiest sleep patterns had a 42% reduction in risk for HF compared with those with unhealthy sleep patterns. Further, the risk for HF was 8% lower in participants who were early risers, 12% lower in participants who slept 7 to 8 hours per day, 17% lower in participants with infrequent insomnia and 34% lower in participants reporting no daytime sleepiness at all.
“Sleep disorders could be improved; for example, exercise may improve sleep duration and reduce sleep disorders, healthy diets, smoking cessation, less drinking and medicine use may also help,” Qi said. “These findings may help clinicians to make recommendations to their patients to improve their overall sleep pattern.”
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