Can Sleep Schedules Affect Men’s Diabetes Risk?

Sleeping either more or fewer hours than average may increase a man’s risk of developing diabetes, according to new research.

A team of investigators examined the sleep duration and diabetes risk factors in 788 people, evaluating a subset of participants in the European Relationship Between Insulin Sensitivity and Cardiovascular Disease (EGIR-RISC) study. Participants were healthy adults between the ages of 30 and 60 years and were recruited from 19 study centers in 14 European countries.
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The authors measured participants’ sleep and physical activity using a single-axis accelerometer. In order to evaluate diabetes risk, the researchers relied on a device known as a hyperinsulinemic-euglycemic clamp to measure the body’s effectiveness at using insulin to process glucose in the bloodstream.

Overall, the team found that men who slept the least were more likely to demonstrate less ability to process glucose compared with men who slept roughly the average 7 hours nightly. The authors found the same among men who slept more than the average amount. Both of these groups also showed higher blood glucose levels than men who routinely got an average amount of sleep per night.

Noting that obstructive sleep apnea (OSA)—a factor the authors note was “not well-examined” in the study—could be a contributor to poor sleep in men, study coauthor Peter Nilsson, MD, PhD, said the “simple message” to emerge from these findings “is that overweight and obese men with OSA, and maybe a positive family history for type 2 diabetes, are at increased risk for type 2 diabetes themselves.”

Male patients “often underreport sleep problems to their primary care physicians,” said Dr Nilsson, a professor at Lund University in Sweden.

Dr Nilsson recommends that primary care practitioners actively listen to male patients and ask them about sleep patterns, adding that “finding a subgroup of men [for whom] an extra evaluation of OSA may be called for could be a wise recommendation, as treatment is now available, [in the form of] CPAP [continuous positive-airway pressure] during nighttime.”

—Mark McGraw

Reference

Rutters F, Besson H, Walker M, et al. The association between sleep duration, insulin sensitivity and β-cell function: the EGIR-RISC study [Published online June 29, 2016]. J Clin Endocrinol Metabol. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1210/jc.2016-1045.