Adherence to a Healthy Sleep Pattern and Risk of Chronic Kidney Disease: The UK Biobank Study

To examine the association of a healthy sleep pattern, characterized by sleep of 7 to 8 h/d, morning person, no insomnia, no frequent snoring, and no daytime sleepiness, with the risk of chronic kidney disease (CKD).

We included 392,218 European adults, aged 38 to 73 years, who were free of CKD at recruitment between March 13, 2006, and October 1, 2010, from the UK Biobank study. Data on sleep behaviors were collected through questionnaires at recruitment. Cox proportional hazards regression models were used to assess the relations between the healthy sleep score and risk of CKD.

We identified 18,842 incident CKD cases after a mean follow-up of 11.1 (SD 2.2) years. The healthy sleep score was inversely associated with the risk of CKD in a dose-dependent manner (P for trend, <.001). Compared with the participants with a poor sleep pattern (score of 0-1), the multivariate adjusted hazard ratio of CKD was 0.77 (95% CI, 0.71 to 0.84) for those with the healthiest sleep pattern (score of 5). In addition, we found that the inverse association was stronger in individuals without history of hypertension compared with individuals with hypertension at baseline (P for interaction, .003) and in those 60 years of age or younger compared with their older counterparts (P for interaction, <.001).

Our data suggest that adherence to an overall healthy sleep pattern is associated with a lower risk of CKD, especially for individuals without history of hypertension and those who are younger.