U-shaped association between sleep duration and the risk of respiratory diseases mortality: a large prospective cohort study from UK Biobank.

Abstract

Our cohort study aimed to study the association between sleep duration and risk of mortality due to respiratory diseases. We included 498,200 participants from UK Biobank (2006-2021). We classified sleep duration as short sleep duration (<7 h), long sleep duration (>9 h for adults, >8 h for older adults) and mid-range sleep duration (7~9 h). We used the cox proportional hazards model and restricted cubic spline analysis to explore the association between sleep duration and respiratory diseases mortality. During a median follow-up of 12.49 years, 2,477 deaths due to respiratory diseases were recorded, of which, 1,099 were deaths due to chronic lower respiratory diseases. Cox models with penalized splines showed U-shaped associations of sleep duration with mortality due to total respiratory diseases and chronic lower respiratory diseases. Compared with mid-range sleep duration, short sleep duration was associated with 14% higher risk of total respiratory diseases mortality (HR =1.14, 95% CI: 1.04, 1.25), meanwhile long sleep duration was associated with 35% higher risk of total respiratory diseases mortality (HR =1.35, 95% CI: 1.19, 1.55), after adjustment of baseline characteristics, health status and lifestyle habits. Similarly, the HR for chronic lower respiratory diseases mortality were 1.20 (95% CI: 1.04, 1.38) and 1.44 (95% CI: 1.19, 1.74), respectively. There were U-shaped association between sleep duration and respiratory diseases mortality. Appropriate sleep duration may improve the progress of respiratory diseases.