Dose-response associations of device-measured sleep regularity and duration with incident dementia in 82391 UK adults

Sleep is a crucial lifestyle factor with impacts on mental and cognitive health. The associations between objectively measured sleep and risk of incident dementia are not yet fully understood. To evaluate the associations of device-measured sleep duration and regularity with incident dementia and explore whether sleep regularity moderates the association of sleep duration with dementia.

Population-based prospective cohort study of 82,391 adults aged 43 to 79 years from the UK Biobank accelerometry subsample, collected between 2013 and 2015, followed up to 2022. Device-based sleep duration (h/day) and sleep regularity index (SRI), a metric ranging from 0-100 that quantifies a person's sleep regularity (with a greater value indicating higher consistency), were calculated from wrist-worn accelerometry data recorded over the course of one week. Incident all-cause dementia cases were obtained from national hospital admission, primary care and mortality data followed up to 30 November 2022. We used Cox proportional hazard models to estimate the hazard ratios (HRs) for incident dementia after adjustment for common demographic and clinical covariates.

Over a mean follow-up of 7.9 years, 694 incident dementia cases occurred. We observed a U-shaped association between sleep duration and incident dementia, with only short sleep (< 7 h) being significantly associated with a higher risk of dementia. The median sleep duration for short sleepers (< 7 h) of 6.5 h, compared to the reference point of 7.9 h was associated with HR of 1.19 (95%CI 1.01,1.40) for incident dementia. Sleep regularity was negatively associated with dementia risk in a near-linear fashion (linear p = 0.01, non-linear p = 0.57). When we dichotomized sleep regularity, those in the higher sleep regularity group (SRI ≥ 70) had an HR of 0.74 (95%CI 0.63, 0.87) compared to those with lower sleep regularity (SRI < 70). The beneficial associations between sleep regularity and incident dementia were present only among participants with short (< 7 h) and long (≥ 8 h) sleep duration.

Assuming that the associations we observed are causal, maintaining a regular sleep pattern may help offset the deleterious association of inadequate sleep duration with dementia. Interventions aimed at improving sleep regularity may be a viable option for people not able to achieve the recommended hours of sleep.