A Prospective Study of Sleep Duration and Coronary Heart Disease in Women

Background Long-term sleep deprivation is common in today's society. Recent experiments have demonstrated that short-term sleep deprivation in healthy subjects results in adverse physiologic changes, including a decreased glucose tolerance and an increased blood pressure. However, the long-term health consequences of long-term sleep deprivation are unclear. The objective of this study was to determine whether decreased sleep duration (from self-reports) is associated with an increased risk of coronary events. Methods We studied a cohort of 71 617 US female health professionals (aged 45-65 years), without reported coronary heart disease (CHD) at baseline, who were enrolled in the Nurses' Health Study. Subjects…