A good night’s sleep can lower the risk of being diagnosed with asthma, according to a new British Medical Journal study. Poor-quality sleep patterns could potentially double the risk of receiving an asthma diagnosis, say the report’s authors. As a result of the findings, researchers conclude that spotting and treating sleep disorders early on might lessen risks of contracting the lung disease, irrespective of an individual’s genetic make-up.
People with asthma often report difficulties sleeping, including insomnia. However, it was not clear what effect sleep quality had on the risk of suffering from asthma, leading researchers to draw on nearly half a million participants from the UK Biobank, a record of genetic information, to investigate a potential link.
Participants were asked about their sleep patterns and categorised into three groups depending on their genetic asthma risk: high, intermediate and low risk. People at high genetic risk of asthma who also reported poor sleep patterns were 122 per cent more likely to be diagnosed with asthma than those with both a healthy sleep pattern and a low genetic risk.
During the monitoring period of nine years, 7,105 people at high genetic risk of asthma and 5,748 at intermediate genetic risk were diagnosed with the condition. Compared with those at low genetic risk, those with the highest risk were 47 per cent more likely to be diagnosed with asthma, while those with a poor sleep pattern were 55 per cent more likely.
“The negative impact of sleep disorders on asthma, which is generally considered a chronic inflammatory disease, might be mediated by sleep-induced chronic inflammation,” say professors Fuzhong Xue and Qing Wang, both of Shandong University in China.
“Previous studies have demonstrated that sleep disorders, such as unfavourable sleep duration and insomnia, are associated with chronic inflammation.
“In theory, the immune response to inflammation could generate pro-inflammatory cytokines that result in cellular infiltration and airway inflammation, further increasing the risk of asthma.”
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Further in-depth analysis on a smaller group of people suggested that healthy sleep patterns might reduce the risk of asthma in those at high genetic risk by 37 per cent, suggesting that a healthy sleep pattern might help offset asthma risk, regardless of genetic susceptibility, according to the researchers. The report also says that in the general population a low genetic risk combined with a healthy sleep pattern might translate into 19 per cent fewer cases of asthma.
Given the study is observational and cannot establish cause, the researchers have acknowledged limitations to their findings. Information was gathered only on 38- to 73-year-olds, meaning any effect on children or young adults remains unclear. In addition, the findings only apply to people of European ancestry. The UK Biobank may also be subject to a “healthy volunteer” selection bias.
Nevertheless, the researchers said: “Considering that poor sleep combined with high genetic susceptibility yielded a greater than twofold asthma risk, sleep patterns could be recommended as an effective lifestyle intervention to prevent future asthma, especially for individuals with high-risk genetics.”
