Frequent, loud snoring increases the risk of preterm delivery: News from the sleep conference

Another interesting paper presented at the annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies linking obstructive sleep apnea and preterm and early preterm delivery. Women who are frequent, loud snorers during pregnancy and also before they were pregnant have a definite higher risk of preterm delivery as compared to their counterpart who sleep soundly throughout night.

The paper was presented at the 31st Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies LLC (APSS), Boston. by Galit Levi Dunietz, PhD, MPH, of the University of Michigan.

It is already known that women with Sleep disordered breathing (SDB) do not fare well in pregnancy and many particularly have maternal hypertension and diabetes and possibly fetal growth restriction.

The study looked at 904 non-hypertensive, non-diabetic women, pregnant women in their third trimester, attending a prenatal clinic at a large medical center.

The women were divided into 4 groups based on their snoring pattern: non-snorers, infrequent-quiet, frequent-quiet, or frequent-loud snorers.

Only 6% of women were frequent loud-snorers and about 50% did not snore at all. 

About 25% of women in the pre-pregnancy frequent, loud- snoring category had a preterm delivery.

After adjusting for all pre-pregnancy and pregnancy confounders, those women who were frequent loud-snorers had an 81% increased risk of preterm delivery.  

The mean time to delivery in frequent loud snoring group was 37.1 weeks as compared to 38.6 weeks in controls.

Non-loud, infrequent, or pregnancy-onset snorers did not face the risk for preterm delivery.

Galit Levi Dunietz, PhD, MPH, of the University of Michigan said, “The fact that there is an association between snoring and time to delivery in a cohort which is not hypertensive is alarming, and I think that treatment for snoring earlier on in pregnancy may alleviate some of these outcomes.”

She further added that “The combination of snoring frequency and intensity may be a clinically useful marker to identify otherwise low-risk women who are likely to deliver earlier.”

.

A good night sleep makes you feel like winning a lottery worth $ 250000.

Getting the right amount and good quality  sleep is as beneficial to health and happiness as winning the lottery, according to research by the University of Warwick. The paper was published in March issue of Sleep Journal to mark  World Sleep Day on March 17, 2017. [1]

Lack of enough sleep has already been recognized as a major public health problem and has been linked to many chronic health diseases like hypertension, diabetes, depression, and obesity, as well as from cancer, increased mortality, and reduced quality of life and productivity.

CDC recommends that adults between the age of 18-60 years need a minimum of 7 or more hours of good quality sleep. [2]

Dr. Nicole Tang in the Department of Psychology at the University of Warwick in England, analyzed sleep patterns of more than 30,594 people in the United Kingdom for a period of 4 years.

The study assessed three key patterns of interests, sleep quantity, sleep quality, use of sleep medication. The outcome of interests were general health and well-being which were measured by General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12; Likert scoring)  and the 12-item Short-Form Health Survey (SF-12).

About 77% participants reported an average sleep duration of 6–8 hours per night, nearly 80% reported good sleep quality while 16% took sleep medication at-least 3 times a week.

After adjusting for baseline variations and known confounders it was seen that good night sleep is associated with benefits in health and well-being, with quality of sleep is more important than quantity of sleep. Physical benefits of sleep take longer time to occur than mental well-being. Sleep is a multi-dimensional experience where the quality also matters along with the quantity.

“The current findings suggest that a positive change in sleep is linked to better physical and mental well-being further down the line,” said Dr Tang.

“It is refreshing to see the healing potential of sleep outside of clinical trial settings, as this goes to show that the benefits of better sleep are accessible to everyone and not reserved for those with extremely bad sleep requiring intensive treatments.

Association between sleep deprivation and medical errors like clinical performance deficit, and daytime fatigue are well established by earlier studies. It has also been linked to many vehicular accidents, industrial disasters and other work related errors.

Taking sleep medication is worse for health and these group of patients performed worse over course of years than those not requiring sleeping aides.  

An estimated 50-70 million US adults have sleep or wakefulness disorder and Questions about sleep are seldom asked by physicians.

Sleep has recently emerged as a feasible target for applying preventive measure to improve health of public. 

The full text of article  can be accessed here.

---

[1] https://worldsleepday.org/

[2] https://www.cdc.gov/sleep/about_sleep/how_much_sleep.html