In the September 2021 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, an analysis of a large population-based study based on the UK Biobank data was published, demonstrating an association of the night sleep quality and the risk of cardiac arrhythmias. Most of the previous research only focused on the individual sleep behaviors, without considering the overall sleep patterns, but various sleep behaviors are typically correlated.
A total of 403,187 participants from UK Biobank were included. A healthy sleep pattern was defined by chronotype, sleep duration, insomnia, snoring, and daytime sleepiness. Each sleep factor was coded 1 if it was considered healthy and 0 if it was not. The sum of five sleep factors was used to calculate a sleep-pattern index score. A score of 4 or 5 indicates a healthy sleep pattern, a score of 2 or 3 indicates an intermediate sleep pattern, and a score of 1 or 0 indicates a poor sleep pattern. Additionally, a weighted genetic risk score for atrial fibrillation/flutter (AF) was calculated.
The researchers found a progressively higher incidence of AF and bradyarrhythmia as sleep pattern scores got progressively worse. The healthy sleep pattern was significantly associated with lower risks of AF (HR comparing extreme categories: 0.71; 95% CI: 0.64-0.80) and bradyarrhythmia (HR: 0.65; 95% CI: 0.54-0.77), but not ventricular arrhythmias, after adjustment for demographic, lifestyle, and genetic risk factors. Compared with individuals with a healthy sleep score of 0-1 (poor sleep group), those with a healthy sleep score of 5 had a 29% and 35% lower risk of developing AF and bradyarrhythmia, respectively. Additionally, the genetic predisposition to AF significantly modified the association of the healthy sleep pattern with the risk of AF (P interaction = 0.017). The inverse association of the healthy sleep pattern with the risk of AF was stronger among those with a lower genetic risk of AF.
Reference: https://www.jacc.org/doi/10.1016/j.jacc.2021.07.023
