Association between Sleep Duration and Hypertension among Adults in Southwest China

This study aimed to evaluate the association between sleep duration and hypertension among adults in southwest China.

Baseline variables were collected from a representative sample of 20,053 adults aged 23-98 years in southwest China who received physical examinations from January 2019 to December 2020. All participants were categorized into either a hypertension group or a non-hypertension group. Sleep duration was classified as short (<6 h/day), normal (6-8 h/day),or long (>8 h/day). Baseline variables were compared between individuals with and without hypertension by rank-sum tests for two independent samples or χ² tests for nonparametric data. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was performed to evaluate the association between sleep duration and hypertension.

The overall incidence of hypertension was 51.2%. Unadjusted analysis showed that the risk of hypertension was higher in individuals with short (<6h/day) or long (>8h/day) sleep durations compared with those with a normal (6-8 h/day) sleep duration. The risk of hypertension was significantly increased by 30.1% in participants with a long (>8h/day) sleep duration compared with those with a normal (6-8h/day) sleep duration (OR = 1.301, P < 0.010, 95%CI = 1.149-1.475). The risk of hypertension was also increased by 1.1% in participants with a short (<6h/day) sleep duration compared with participants with a normal (6-8h/day) sleep duration, but the difference was not significant (OR = 1.011, P = 0.849, 95%CI = 0.905-1.129). After fully adjusting for confounding factors (model 4), the risk of hypertension was increased significantly (by 25%) in individuals with a short (<6h/day) sleep duration (OR = 1.25, P = 0.02, 95%CI = 1.036-1.508) but not in those with a long (>8h/day) sleep duration (17.5% increase) compared with participants with a normal (6-8h/day) sleep duration (OR = 1.175, P = 0.144, 95%CI = 0.946-1.460).

The results of this study indicate that a short (<6h/day) sleep duration is related to an increased risk of hypertension, suggesting that sleep helps to protect against hypertension.