Association of Sleep Duration With Mental and Physical Health Measures Among Cancer Survivors

Sleep disturbance is prevalent with chronic diseases and poor health. However, evidence evaluating these associations and their variation by cancer status remains limited. We sought to examine the association between sleep duration and mental and physical health measures by cancer history.

Adults participating in the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System in 2018, 2020, and 2022 were included. Sleep duration was categorized as short (≤5 hours), recommended (6-8 hours), and long (≥9 hours); mental and physical health measures included depression history, fair/poor general health, frequent mental distress, and frequent physical distress (defined as >14 days/month). Multinomial regression estimated the association of sleep duration with measures stratified by cancer history.

A total of 1,097,127 adults were included, representing a weighted population of 662,954,607 adults; 184,901 (11.6%) had a history of cancer. Cancer survivors had a higher adjusted relative risk ratio of short sleep (aRRR = 1.13; 95% CI, 1.09 to 1.18) and long sleep (aRRR = 1.22; 95% CI, 1.17 to 1.27). Among cancer survivors, 11.2% (n = 17,591) reported short sleep, 78.4% (n = 147,058) recommended sleep, and 10.5% (n = 20,252) long sleep. Among cancer survivors, compared with recommended sleep, short sleep was associated with higher odds of frequent mental distress (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] = 3.10; 95% CI, 2.83 to 3.39) and frequent physical distress (aOR = 2.58; 95% CI, 2.38 to 2.80). Long sleep was also associated with higher adjusted odds of frequent mental distress (aOR = 1.61; 95% CI, 1.45 to 1.78) and frequent physical distress (aOR = 1.96; 95% CI, 1.80 to 2.14). Similar associations were observed among adults without cancer.

Sleep aberrations may serve as an important health marker among adults with and without cancer history although findings should be interpreted in the context of a broad, predominantly long-term survivorship population.