Sleep duration and excess heart age among US adults

Insufficient sleep negatively impacts the cardiovascular system. No study has examined the association between sleep duration and heart age (person's predicted vascular age based on cardiovascular disease [CVD] risk profile). This study examines association between sleep duration and excess heart age (EHA; difference between heart age and chronological age) among US adults.

Cross-sectional 2007-2014 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey data for respondents aged 30-74 years without CVD or stroke (n = 12,775).

Self-reported sleep duration was classified into 5 categories (≤5, 6, 7, 8, and ≥9 hours). We used sex-specific Framingham heart age algorithm to calculate heart age and multivariable linear regression to examine association between sleep duration and EHA.

A total of 13.4% (95% confidence interval 12.5-14.3), 24.2% (23.1-25.2), 31.0% (29.8-32.3), 25.9% (25.0-26.9), and 5.5% (5.0-6.1) reported sleeping ≤5, 6, 7, 8, and ≥9 hours, respectively. We observed a nonlinear relationship between sleep duration and EHA using 7 hours as reference: EHA (adjusted for sociodemographics, body mass index, physical activity, Healthy Eating Index-2010, sleep disorder, and depression status) was 5.1 (4.8-5.8), 4.5 (3.9-5.1), 3.7 (3.3-4.0), 4.5 (4.1-5.0), and 4.1 (3.3-4.9) years for sleep durations of ≤5, 6, 7, 8 and ≥9 hours, respectively (P = .015 for quadratic trend). EHA was significantly higher among participants with lower education, lower income, and obesity.

Mean adjusted EHA was lowest among adults who reported sleeping 7 hours per night and increased as adults reported sleeping fewer or more hours. Discussing sleep duration in the context of EHA may be helpful for patients and clinicians.