Sleep patterns, genetic susceptibility, and venous thromboembolism: A prospective study of 384,758 UK Biobank participants

Abstract

Background Although healthy sleep patterns have been linked to a lower risk of cardiovascular disease in earlier research, it is unclear how beneficial they are for venous thromboembolism (VTE). Aim This research aimed to examine the correlation between sleep patterns, genetic susceptibility, and VTE. Methods In the UK Biobank cohort, healthy sleep behaviors were defined as early chronotype, 7–8 hours of sleep each day, no snoring, infrequent insomnia, and infrequent daytime sleepiness. Each of the five criteria was given 1 point, creating a healthy sleep score ranging from 0 to 5. Cox proportional hazards regression models were utilized to examine the associations between genetic susceptibility, healthy sleep score and VTE. Results The UK Biobank study included 384,758 participants aged 56.6 ± 8.0 years. After a median of 11.9 years of follow-up, 8,885 (2.3%) participants were diagnosed with VTE. A healthy sleep score inversely affected VTE risk. For participants with a score of 5, the hazard ratio of VTE was 0.813 (95% confidence interval: 0.758–0.873, P<0.001) compared to those with a score ≤2. Early chronotype, sleeping 7–8 hours each day, infrequent insomnia, and infrequent daytime sleepiness were significantly associated with a 7.9%, 8.3%, 5.1%, and 20.7% lower risk of VTE, respectively. In addition, the correlation between sleep pattern and the incidence of VTE was consistent, regardless of genetic susceptibility (P for interaction = 0.366). Conclusions Our secondary analysis of a large-scale prospectively gathered registry revealed that individuals with a healthy sleep pattern are significantly correlated with lower risk of developing VTE, irrespective of genetic susceptibility.