Short sleep duration is a novel independent risk factor for overweight and obesity

To investigate the association between sleep duration (SD) and body mass index (BMI) in young adults.

This cross-sectional study was carried out between January and September 2022, and the participants were 1724 health sciences students aged 16-22 years, from Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, Dammam, Saudi Arabia. Measurement of height and weight was carried out and BMI was calculated by the formula=weight in kg/height in m². Based on SD, subjects were divided into 3 groups: short SD: <7 hours/24 hours; normal SD: 7-9 hours/24 hours; and increased SD: >9 hours/24 hours.

The participants' mean age was 19±3.2 years. Short sleepers had significantly higher BMI (24.2 kg/m², p<0.001) relative to normal (23.03 kg/m²) and long sleepers (23.2 kg/m², p=0.041). In addition, short sleep duration (SSD) was associated with overweight (OW) and obesity (OB) (p=0.01). Moreover, multivariate logistic regression analysis found SSD to be an independent risk factor for OW and OB, as it retained its significance (p=0.049) even after adjusting for the major confounding factors of BMI (namely, decreased physical activity and increased food intake). Moreover, it emerged that SSD could lead to 1.47 times higher odds ratio of OW and OB.

Participants with a SSD had significantly higher BMI than normal and long sleepers. Short sleep duration is an independent risk factor for increased BMI, which potentially leads to 1.47 times increased odds ratio of having OW and OB.