Insomnia Linked to Diabetes Risk

A study (#0866) being presented later this morning as a poster indicates that insomnia with short sleep duration is associated with an increased risk of diabetes. Yesterday the same research team presented an abstract (#0868) showing that chronic insomnia with objective short sleep duration in men also is associated with an increased risk for mortality.

In the April 1 issue of the journal SLEEP, the researchers also published a study showing that chronic insomnia with objectively measured short sleep time is an independent and clinically significant risk factor for hypertension. Read an AASM press release about the study.

According to the authors, these results indicate that objective sleep duration may predict the medical severity of chronic insomnia, and they suggest that the medical impact of insomnia has been previously underestimated.

You can download the SLEEP 2009 abstract supplement as an 11 MB file in PDF format.

Sleep, Obesity & Diabetes in Black and White

Three studies being presented later this morning as posters examine the relationship between race and sleep.

One study (#0463) reports that race significantly influences the risk of obesity conferred by short sleep duration, with blacks having a higher risk than whites. Results show that the prevalence of both short sleep and obesity was higher in black Americans than in white Americans.

Another study (#0459) used the same sample to show that both short and long sleepers are at great risk for diabetes. The prevalence of diabetes was 12 percent for blacks and eight percent for whites.

A third study (#1197) shows that whites were more likely to report having excessive daytime sleepiness more than five days per month, but African Americans had a significantly higher risk of daytime sleepiness using the Epworth Sleepiness Scale.

You can download the SLEEP 2009 abstract supplement as an 11 MB file in PDF format.