Consistent sleep in early adulthood may cut diabetes risk

(HealthDay)—Maintaining a consistent pattern of seven to eight hours of sleep during early to middle adulthood may lessen the risk for diabetes in women, according to a study published online March 24 in Diabetes Care.

Megu Y. Baden, M.D., from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, and colleagues identified sleep duration trajectories based on data from 60,068 women (aged 20 to 25, 26 to 35, 36 to 45, and ≥46 years) participating in the Nurses' Health Study II (median age, 54.9 years). Associations between sleep duration trajectories and incident type 2 diabetes were evaluated.

The researchers found that during a median follow-up of 7.8 years, there were 1,797 incident diabetes cases. Persistent five-, six-, seven-, or eight-hour sleep duration trajectories were identified, in addition to increased or decreased sleep duration trajectories. Compared with the persistent seven-hour sleep duration group, the risk for diabetes was higher for most groups: five-hour group (hazard ratio [HR], 1.43; 95 percent confidence interval [CI], 1.10 to 1.84), six-hour group (HR, 1.17; 95 percent CI, 1.04 to 1.33), eight-hour group (HR, 0.96; 95 percent CI, 0.84 to 1.10), increased sleep duration group (HR, 1.33; 95 percent CI, 1.09 to 1.61), and decreased sleep duration group (HR, 1.32; 95 percent CI, 1.10 to 1.59), after adjusting for diabetes risk factors. After further adjustment for time-updated comorbidities and body mass index, significantly higher risk remained only for the decreased sleep-duration group (HR, 1.24; 95 percent CI, 1.03 to 1.50).

"Our findings underscore that maintaining a consistent pattern of the recommended daily seven to eight hours of sleep is beneficial for the prevention of type 2 diabetes," the authors write.

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