Study Finds Sleep Disorders Increase Risk of Death
Several presentations at the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies in Seattle this month stated that poor quality sleep is associated with increased risk of death.
One of these studies, conducted at Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey, Pennsylvania, suggests that insomnia may be as hazardous as obstructive sleep apnea.
“Insomnia with objective short sleep duration is associated with an activation of the stress system, i.e., higher secretion of cortisol and increased risk of high blood pressure,” said lead author Dr. Alexandros Vgontzas. He and his colleagues studied the effects of insomnia that persisted for at least 1 year and objective short sleep duration on mortality.
Dr. Vgontzas and his team analyzed data from 1741 randomly selected men and women. The mortality rate was nearly twenty percent during the fourteen year follow-up period among men. The mortality for women followed for ten years was just over ten percent.
When compared to men who had normal sleep durations and sleep patterns for at least 6 hours, men with insomnia and shorter sleep duration had up to a 500% increase in mortality risk. The researchers also reported that mortality risk among women with similar characteristics was also higher, however, the association was not statistically significant.
“The longer follow-up of men may explain why we did not have the same finding in women,” said Dr. Vgontzas. “Another possibility is that men are more vulnerable physically to this type of insomnia, i.e., insomnia associated with objective short sleep duration.”
Because “insomnia with objective sleep duration (of less than 6 hours) has significant medical consequences similar to sleep apnea, this type of insomnia should become a medical priority in terms of its detection and treatment,” he said. “At this point there are no studies that have assessed which type of treatment — medication vs. psychotherapy vs. a combination of the two — is more effective,” he added.
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