Healthy sleep patterns lower risk of atrial fibrillation, bradyarrhythmia

Keeping a healthy sleep pattern appears to reduce the risks of atrial fibrillation (AF) and bradyarrhythmia, independent of traditional risk factors, suggests a study. In addition, genetic susceptibility modifies the association with AF.

A total of 403,187 participants from the UK Biobank were included in this study, which aimed to prospectively examine the associations between a healthy sleep pattern and the risks of cardiac arrhythmias. The authors calculated with weighted genetic risk score for AF. A healthy sleep pattern was defined by chronotype, sleep duration, insomnia, snoring, and daytime sleepiness.

After adjusting for demographic, lifestyle, and genetic risk factors, a healthy sleep pattern significantly correlated with reduced risks of AF or flutter (hazard ratio [HR], 0.71, 95 percent confidence interval [CI], 0.64–0.80) and bradyarrhythmia (HR, 0.65, 95 percent CI, 0.54–0.77), but not ventricular arrhythmias.

Participants with a healthy sleep score of 5, compared with those with a score of 0–1 (poor sleep group), had a 29-percent lower risk of developing AF and 35-percent lower risk of developing bradyarrhythmia.

Of note, genetic predisposition to AF significantly modified the association between the healthy sleep pattern and AF risk (p_interaction=0.017). The inverse relationship between the healthy sleep pattern and AF risk was more pronounced among individuals with a lower genetic predisposition to AF.

“Emerging evidence has linked sleep behaviours with the risk of cardiac arrhythmias,” the authors said. “The various sleep behaviours are typically correlated; however, most of the previous studies only focused on the individual sleep behaviour, without considering the overall sleep patterns.”