Weekend compensatory sleep is associated with reduced risk of heart disease: a prospective UK Biobank-based cohort study

Abstract

Background and Aims

Influenced by the demands of school or work, people often fall out of sync with their circadian rhythms, which leads to sleeping in on days off. Despite this phenomenon, there is a lack of research examining whether compensatory weekend sleep has positive effects on heart health.

Methods and results

Our prospective cohort study utilized data from the UK Biobank (UKB) and encompassed 90,903 participants. To evaluate the relationship between compensated weekend sleep and heart disease. The sleep data was recorded by Axivity AX3 accelerometer from UKB and grouped by quartiles. Hospitalization records and cause of death registry information were used to diagnose various cardiac diseases including IHD, HF, AF, and stroke. Then multivariate Cox proportional hazard modeling was used to examine the potential impact of compensated sleep on the risk of heart disease.

At a median follow-up time of up to 13.8 years, we found that participants in the compensatory sleep group(Q4) had a lower risk of having heart disease in the fully adjusted model (HR: 0.809, 95%CI: 0.766,0.854), which was not influenced by the effect of genetic risk for IHD, HF, or AF. These relationships were even more pronounced in the subgroup with daily sleep deprivation (HR:0.801, 95%CI: 0.718,0.894).

Conclusion

Sufficient compensatory sleep on weekends is linked to a low risk of heart disease, including IHD, AF, HF, and stroke, which is independent of genetic risk. And the association becomes even more pronounced among individuals who regularly experience inadequate sleep on weekdays.

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Author notes

Funding Acknowledgements: Type of funding sources: Foundation. Main funding source(s): CAMS Innovation Fund for Medical Sciences (CIFMS)