Scientists from the Army Medical University (China) have found that sleep disturbances can significantly increase the risk of developing more than 170 diseases. The results of a large-scale study have been published in the journal Health Data Science (HDS).

The study used health data from 90,000 people from the UK Biobank. Participants wore accelerometers for several years, which recorded their sleep duration, stability, frequency of nighttime awakenings, and deviations from a regular schedule. This approach allowed scientists to obtain a more accurate picture than traditional surveys.

According to the data obtained, unstable sleep can more than double the risk of conditions such as type 2 diabetes, Parkinson's disease, cirrhosis of the liver, gangrene, and acute kidney injury. For example, people who fall asleep after 12:30 a.m. are 2.5 times more likely to develop cirrhosis than those who go to bed around 11 p.m. Sleep disturbances more than doubled the likelihood of gangrene.

Almost half of all identified links were related to a “disrupted” sleep schedule — an area that had previously been understudied due to a lack of objective data. Additional analysis showed that people with sleep disorders were more likely to show signs of inflammation, including elevated levels of white blood cells and C-reactive protein in the blood.