Sleep Dysregulation Ups Risk for Inflammatory Bowel Disease

FRIDAY, Nov. 18, 2022 (HealthDay News) — Short sleep duration and daytime napping appear to increase the risk for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), according to a study published online Nov. 9 in Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics.

Shuai Yuan, from Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China, and colleagues assessed associations of sleep duration and daytime napping with IBD, Crohn disease (CD), and ulcerative colitis (UC). The analysis included 806 incident CD and 1,798 incident UC cases with a median follow-up of 12.0 years.

The researchers found that comparing sleep duration of no more than five hours/day with seven hours/day, the risk for IBD was higher (hazard ratios [95 percent confidence intervals], 1.36 [1.17 to 1.59], 1.53 [1.17 to 2.00], and 1.29 [1.07 to 1.56] for IBD, CD, and UC, respectively). There was a trend toward higher incidence when comparing participants with and without daytime napping (hazard ratios [95 percent confidence intervals], 1.13 [1.05 to 1.23], 1.25 [1.08 to 1.44], and 1.09 [0.90 to 1.20] for IBD, CD, and UC, respectively). No interaction was seen for sleep duration and daytime napping with polygenic risk scores (PRS). However, the associations were stronger among individuals with high PRS versus low PRS.

“Maintaining a healthy sleep duration and no daytime napping may be a prevention strategy for lowering the risk of IBD,” the authors write.

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