Sleep Disturbance and Its Association with Gastrointestinal Symptoms/Diseases and Psychological Comorbidity

We aimed to investigate gastrointestinal symptoms, clinical characteristics, and psychological factors in subjects with and without sleep disturbance (SD) in a health screening cohort.

We enrolled 2,752 consecutive subjects during their health checkups. All participants underwent an evaluation with questionnaires. Demographic characteristics and biochemical data were recorded. SD was confirmed when Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index score was greater than 5.

Among the study population (n = 2,674), 956 (36%) individuals had SD. SD was associated with female gender, older age, lower level of education, higher systolic blood pressure, higher serum high-density lipoprotein levels and higher prevalence of functional dyspepsia and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). SD subjects also had more depression, more anxiety, more severe gastrointestinal reflux disease symptoms and higher prevalence of non-erosive reflux disease (NERD; p < 0.001). SD was -independently associated with female gender (OR 1.75, p < 0.001), older age (OR 1.03, p < 0.001), NERD (OR 1.88, p = 0.004), IBS (OR 1.51, p = 0.043), and depression (OR 1.16, p < 0.001) by multivariate analysis.

Future studies will be needed to clarify the interrelationships among SD, psychological stress, and functional gastrointestinal disorders.