New research from China has found insomnia can be a cause for an increased risk in having a heart attack or stroke, a finding that can help cardiologists better predict a patient’s risk for experiencing an adverse cardiac event.
The study, conducted by researchers at China Medical University in Shenyang, China, was published today in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology.
In addition to heart attack and stroke, the study showed that insomnia increases the risk of acute myocardial infarction, coronary heart disease and heart failure.
"Sleep is important for biological recovery and takes around a third of our lifetime, but in modern society more and more people complain of insomnia," said Qiao He, the lead author on the study and a graduate student at the university, in a statement. "For example, it is reported that approximately one-third of the general population in Germany has suffered from insomnia symptoms. Researchers have found associations between insomnia and poor health outcomes. But the links between insomnia and heart disease or stroke have been inconsistent."
The research looked at 15 prospective cohort studies that included more than 160,000 patients. Over several decades after the studies were initiated, 11,702 adverse events occurred, many in patients who reported they had difficulty sleeping.
"We found that difficulty initiating sleep, difficulty maintaining sleep, or non-restorative sleep were associated with 27 percent, 11 percent, and 18 percent higher risks of cardiovascular and stroke events, respectively,” He said.
Additionally, results showed that women with insomnia had a slightly higher risk of suffering a cardiac event compared to men.
"We cannot conclude that insomnia is more dangerous for women, given the limitations of meta-analyses and the lack of a statistically significant difference between sexes,” she said. “However, we do know that women are more prone to insomnia because of differences in genetics, sex hormones, stress, and reaction to stress. It may therefore be prudent to pay more attention to women's sleep health."