More REM Sleep Linked to Lower Risk of 83 Diseases

People who spend more time in REM sleep may have a lower risk of developing dozens of diseases, according to a large study involving more than 95,000 participants. Researchers also found that greater amounts of deep sleep were associated with lower risks of several conditions, while sleeping for less than five hours a night was linked to an increased risk of multiple diseases.

The study, published September 17 in PLOS Medicine, was conducted by researchers led by Shengzhi Sun of Capital Medical University in China.

Researchers analyzed data from 95,559 UK Biobank participants who wore wrist accelerometers continuously for seven days and nights. Using a deep-learning algorithm, they estimated the amount of REM, deep and light sleep, as well as total sleep duration, periods of wakefulness after falling asleep and night-to-night variations in sleep patterns.

Participants were followed for a median of 8.9 years. The researchers examined health records for associations between sleep characteristics and more than 1,000 disease outcomes.

The analysis found that greater REM sleep was associated with a lower risk of 83 diseases. An increase of 47.6 minutes in REM sleep, corresponding to one interquartile range, was associated with lower risks of heart failure, dementia and Parkinson’s disease. The hazard ratios were 0.74 for heart failure, 0.54 for dementia and 0.20 for Parkinson’s disease.

More deep sleep was associated with a lower risk of seven conditions, including type 2 diabetes and major depressive disorder.

By contrast, irregular sleep patterns and longer periods of wakefulness after initially falling asleep were associated with higher risks of several conditions, including anxiety and substance use disorders.

The researchers also found a non-linear association between total sleep duration and disease risk. For many conditions, the lowest risk was observed among people who slept about six to eight hours per night. Those who slept for less than five hours had an increased risk of 37 diseases.

However, the researchers stressed that the study was observational and therefore cannot establish that sleep patterns directly cause or prevent disease.

The findings add to evidence that both the amount and structure of sleep may be important for long-term health. The authors said that six to eight hours of sleep may be particularly relevant for middle-aged and older adults, potentially because of more favorable distributions of sleep stages.

A phenome-wide association analysis identified 156 significant associations between sleep patterns and incident diseases after Bonferroni correction. Sleep duration showed significant non-linear associations with 86 disease phenotypes, with the lowest-risk sleep duration for 69 of them falling within the six-to-eight-hour range.

The study was supported by several Chinese national and Beijing-based research programs. The funders had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.