Sleep duration and excess heart age among US adults.

OBJECTIVES: Insufficient sleep negatively impacts the cardiovascular system. No study has examined the association between sleep duration and heart age (person's predicted vascular age based on cardiovascular disease [CVD] risk profile). This study examines association between sleep duration and excess heart age (EHA; difference between heart age and chronological age) among US adults.

DESIGN AND PARTICIPANTS: Cross-sectional 2007-2014 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey data for respondents aged 30-74 years without CVD or stroke (n = 12,775).

MEASUREMENTS: Self-reported sleep duration was classified into 5 categories (≤5, 6, 7, 8, and ≥9 hours). We used sex-specific Framingham heart age algorithm to calculate heart age and multivariable linear regression to examine association between sleep duration and EHA.

RESULTS: A total of 13.4% (95% confidence interval 12.5-14.3), 24.2% (23.1-25.2), 31.0% (29.8-32.3), 25.9% (25.0-26.9), and 5.5% (5.0-6.1) reported sleeping ≤5, 6, 7, 8, and ≥9 hours, respectively. We observed a nonlinear relationship between sleep duration and EHA using 7 hours as reference: EHA (adjusted for sociodemographics, body mass index, physical activity, Healthy Eating Index-2010, sleep disorder, and depression status) was 5.1 (4.8-5.8), 4.5 (3.9-5.1), 3.7 (3.3-4.0), 4.5 (4.1-5.0), and 4.1 (3.3-4.9) years for sleep durations of ≤5, 6, 7, 8 and ≥9 hours, respectively (P = .015 for quadratic trend). EHA was significantly higher among participants with lower education, lower income, and obesity.

CONCLUSION: Mean adjusted EHA was lowest among adults who reported sleeping 7 hours per night and increased as adults reported sleeping fewer or more hours. Discussing sleep duration in the context of EHA may be helpful for patients and clinicians.