Irregular Sleep Patterns In Women Increase Risk of Stroke

Researchers said that they had investigated a total of 93,175 women aged between 50 and 79 years. All the women were enrolled in the Women's Health Initiative study.

According to Dr. Jiu-Chiuan Chen, from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, previous studies have revealed a link between sleep duration and mortality. However, Dr. Jiu-Chiuan Chen and co-researchers noted that until the recent study, previous studies had failed to identify any evidence of an association between sleep patterns and cardiovascular diseases.

The study revealed that 8.3 percent of women investigated reported than they normally slept no more than 5 hours per night, while 4.6 percent reported sleeping at least 9 hours per night.

After following the group for an average of 7.5 years, the researchers found that 1,166 women experienced an ischemic stroke, the most common type of stroke, which occurs when a blood vessel in the brain becomes blocked. The ischemic stoke prevents oxygen from getting to the brain and thus results into the death of the brain tissue.

Further analysis found that women with a sleep duration of 6 hours or less, 8 hours, or 9 hours or more increased the risk of stroke by 14 percent, 24 percent, and 70 percent, respectively, compared with sleeping 7 hours.

Women who had cardiovascular disease and slept for 6 hours or less had even a higher risk of stoke.Chen’s group noted that, this amount of sleep increased their risk of stroke by 22 percent.

"The prevalence in women of having long sleep duration is much lower than having sleep duration less than 6 hours. So the overall public health impact of short sleep is probably longer than long sleep," Chen said.

Source Reuters