Effects of sleep duration and weekend catch-up sleep on falling injury in adolescents: a population-based study

This population-based study aimed to determine the effects of sleep deprivation and compensatory weekend catch-up sleep on the risk of falls in adolescents.

Data from the 2013 Korean Youth Risk Behavior Web-based Survey on 57,225 adolescents were investigated. Demographic, socioeconomic, sleep-related, health-related behavioral, and psychological variables were compared between fallers (n = 7346) and non-fallers (n = 49,879). Multivariate logistic regression analysis using a hierarchical model was carried out to identify sleep-related factors (eg, sleep duration, longer weekend catch-up sleep) independently contributing to the risk of falls.

Compared to non-fallers, fallers were associated with a shorter sleep duration (p = 0.001) and later bedtimes on weekdays and weekends (p < 0.001). An average sleep duration of ≤ 5 h (odds ratio [OR] 1.23, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.12-1.34) and of 6 h (OR 1.12, CI 1.03-1.21) were associated with an increased risk of falls. By contrast, an average sleep duration of ≥ 9 h (OR 0.90, CI: 0.82-0.99) and longer weekend catch-up sleep (OR 0.94, CI: 0.89-0.99) were associated with a decreased risk of falls.

Our results corroborate previous suggestions that short sleep duration is a major risk factor for falls among adolescents. Moreover, our study provided a novel finding that longer sleep duration and longer weekend catch-up sleep may have a protective effect against falls. Our findings have important public health implications that modifying school schedules to increase sleep duration could reduce unintentional falls and injuries in school-aged adolescents.