Healthy Sleep Patterns and Risk of Incident Arrhythmias

Background: Emerging evidence has linked sleep behaviors with the risk of cardiac arrhythmias. The various sleep behaviors are typically correlated; however, most of the previous studies only focused on the individual sleep behavior, without considering the overall sleep patterns.

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to prospectively investigate the associations between a healthy sleep pattern with the risks of cardiac arrhythmias.

Methods: A total of 403,187 participants from UK Biobank were included. A healthy sleep pattern was defined by chronotype, sleep duration, insomnia, snoring, and daytime sleepiness. Weighted genetic risk score for atrial fibrillation was calculated.

Results: The healthy sleep pattern was significantly associated with lower risks of atrial fibrillation/flutter (AF) (HR comparing extreme categories: 0.71; 95% CI: 0.64-0.80) and bradyarrhythmia (HR: 0.65; 95% CI: 0.54-0.77), but not ventricular arrhythmias, after adjustment for demographic, lifestyle, and genetic risk factors. Compared with individuals with a healthy sleep score of 0-1 (poor sleep group), those with a healthy sleep score of 5 had a 29% and 35% lower risk of developing AF and bradyarrhythmia, respectively. Additionally, the genetic predisposition to AF significantly modified the association of the healthy sleep pattern with the risk of AF (P interaction = 0.017). The inverse association of the healthy sleep pattern with the risk of AF was stronger among those with a lower genetic risk of AF.

Conclusions: Our results indicate that a healthy sleep pattern is associated with lower risks of AF and bradyarrhythmia, independent of traditional risk factors, and the association with AF is modified by genetic susceptibility.