Abstract
Objective: To study the association between sleep duration and stroke incidence in a British population and to synthesize our findings with published results through a meta-analysis.
Methods: The prospective study included 9,692 stroke-free participants aged 42–81 years from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer–Norfolk cohort. Participants reported sleep duration in 1998–2000 and 2002–2004, and all stroke cases were recorded until March 31, 2009. For the meta-analysis, we searched Ovid Medline, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Library for prospective studies published until May 2014, and pooled effect estimates using a weighted random-effect model.
Results: After 9.5 years of follow-up, 346 cases of stroke occurred. Long sleep was significantly associated with an increased risk of stroke (hazard ratio [HR] = 1.46 [95% confidence interval (CI) 1.08, 1.98]) after adjustment for all covariates. The association remained robust among those without preexisting diseases and those who reported sleeping well. The association for short sleep was smaller (and not statistically significant) (HR = 1.18 [95% CI 0.91, 1.53]). There was a higher stroke risk among those who reported persistently long sleep or a substantial increase in sleep duration over time, compared to those reporting persistently average sleep. These were compatible with the pooled HRs from an updated meta-analysis, which were 1.15 (1.07, 1.24) and 1.45 (1.30, 1.62) for short and long sleep duration, respectively.
Conclusions: This prospective study and meta-analysis identified prolonged sleep as a potentially useful marker of increased future stroke risk in an apparently healthy aging population.
GLOSSARY
- BMI=
- body mass index;
- CI=
- confidence interval;
- CVD=
- cardiovascular disease;
- DBP=
- diastolic blood pressure;
- HR=
- hazard ratio;
- ICD-9=
- International Classification of Diseases–9;
- ICD-10=
- International Classification of Diseases–10;
- MDD=
- major depressive disorder;
- MI=
- myocardial infarction;
- SBP=
- systolic blood pressure
Footnotes
Go to Neurology.org for full disclosures. Funding information and disclosures deemed relevant by the authors, if any, are provided at the end of the article. The Article Processing Charge was paid by CRUK and RCUK.
Editorial, page 1066
Supplemental data at Neurology.org
- Received July 25, 2014.
- Accepted in final form October 27, 2014.
- © 2015 American Academy of Neurology
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Disputes & Debates: Rapid online correspondence
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