Sleep Duration and the Risk of Atherosclerosis: A Mendelian Randomization Study

The association between the length of sleep and atherosclerosis has been reported in many observational studies. However, little is known about its significance as a risk factor for atherosclerosis or as a negative consequence of atherosclerosis.

This study aimed to assess the causal association between sleep duration and the risk of atherosclerosis using publicly available genome-wide association studies (GWAS) summary statistics.

We employed a two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) method with 2 cohorts from MRC-IEU (n=460,099) and UK Biobank (n=361,194) to investigate the causal association between sleep duration and the risk of atherosclerosis. Three methods including the inverse-variance weighted (IVW) technique, Robust adjusted profile score (RAPS), and simple-and weighted-median approach were used to obtain reliable results, and an odds ratio with a 95% confidence interval (CI) was calculated. P<0.05 was considered as a statistical difference. In addition, MR-Egger regression, Radial MR, MR-PRESSO, and leave-one-out analyses were used to assess the possible pleiotropy effects.

No causal association of sleep duration with atherosclerosis was found [OR (95%CI): 0.90 (0.98-1.00), p = 0.186]. Leave-one-out, MR-Egger, and MR-PRESSO analyses failed to detect horizontal pleiotropy.

This MR analysis indicated no causal association between genetically predicted sleep duration and atherosclerosis across European populations.