Healthy Sleep Pattern, Metabolic Diseases, and Risk of Stroke: The Kailuan Cohort Study

Background: Sleep complaints were reported to be associated with stroke, however, the evidence on the association between healthy sleep pattern and stroke risk in Chinese is limited. Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate the association between healthy sleep pattern and stroke in Chinese, and the influence of metabolic diseases on the association. Methods: A total of 11,851 participants from the Kailuan study in China without stroke at baseline were included. We calculated a healthy sleep score according to four sleep factors, and defined the low-risk groups as follows: no insomnia, no excessive daytime sleepiness, no frequent snoring, and sleep 7–8h/d. Each low-risk sleep factor was assigned a score of 1. Cox proportional hazard models were used to assess the association between healthy sleep score and stroke. Mediation analysis was used to estimate the role of metabolic diseases (obesity, diabetes, and hypertension) in the healthy sleep score-stroke association. Results: During a mean follow-up period of 7.7 years, 504 cases of stroke were identified. A higher healthy sleep score was associated with a lower risk of stroke in a dose-response manner (P-trend=0.03). The adjusted hazard ratio (HR) for participants with a healthy sleep score of 4 versus ≤2 was 0.75 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.56, 0.96). In addition, obesity, diabetes, and hypertension collectively explained 21.9% (95% CI: 17.2, 26.5) of the association between healthy sleep score and stroke. Conclusion: Adherence to healthy sleep pattern was associated with a lower risk of stroke, and the favorable association was partially mediated by metabolic diseases.