Short Sleep Duration Linked to Increased Risk for PAD

FRIDAY, March 17, 2023 (HealthDay News) — Short sleep duration is associated with an increased risk for peripheral artery disease (PAD), according to a study published online March 16 in the European Heart Journal Open.

Shuai Yuan, Ph.D., from the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, and colleagues examined the associations of sleep duration and daytime napping with PAD risk in a cohort of 53,416 Swedish adults. The analyses were replicated in a case-control study with 28,123 PAD cases and 128,459 controls from the Million Veteran Program (MVP) and in a cohort of 452,028 individuals from the U.K. Biobank (UKB). Causal inference-based analyses of sleep-related traits and PAD were assessed using two-sample Mendelian randomization among 31,307 PAD cases and 211,753 controls.

The researchers identified a U-shaped association between sleep duration and the risk for PAD in observational analyses. Compared with individuals with a sleep duration of seven to less than eight hours per night, the risk for incident PAD was higher in those with short sleep (less than five hours) or long sleep (at least eight hours; hazard ratios, 1.74 and 1.24, respectively). The analyses in the MVP and UKB supported these findings. Positive associations were also identified between daytime napping and PAD (hazard ratio, 1.32) in an observational analysis. An inverse association between sleep duration and PAD (odds ratio, 0.79 per hour increase) and an association between short sleep and increased PAD (odds ratio, 1.20) were supported by a Mendelian randomization analysis.

“More research is needed on how to interrupt the bidirectional link between short sleep and PAD,” Yuan said in a statement. “Lifestyle changes that help people get more sleep, such as being physically active, may lower the risk of developing PAD. For patients with PAD, optimizing pain management could enable them to have a good night’s sleep.”