Risk for Heart Failure Lower With Healthy Sleep Patterns

MONDAY, Nov. 16, 2020 (HealthDay News) — Adherence to healthy sleep patterns is associated with a lower risk for heart failure, according to a research letter published online Nov. 16 in Circulation.

Xiang Li, Ph.D., from the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine at Tulane University in New Orleans, and colleagues prospectively investigated the association between a validated healthy sleep pattern, incorporating five different sleep behaviors, with the risk for heart failure in a cohort of 408,802 participants aged 37 to 73 years. Chronotype, sleep duration, insomnia, snoring, and excessive daytime sleepiness were combined to create a healthy sleep score.

The researchers identified 5,221 cases of heart failure during a median follow-up of 10.1 years. Across three Fine-Gray subdistribution hazard models, there was an inverse association for the healthy sleep score with the incidence of heart failure. For a 1-point increase in the healthy sleep score, the hazard ratio for heart failure was 0.85. The hazard ratio for heart failure was 0.58 for those with a healthy sleep score of 5 versus a score of 0 or 1. In the multivariable-adjusted model, when analyzing each binary component of the healthy sleep pattern and the risk for heart failure, early chronotype, sleeping seven to eight hours per day, no frequent insomnia, and no frequent daytime sleepiness were each independently associated with a lower risk for heart failure (8, 12, 17, and 34 percent, respectively).

“Our findings highlight the potential importance of overall sleep behaviors in the prevention of heart failure,” the authors write.

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