Poor sleep might increase risk of Asthma: Research

A big UK Biobank research published in the open-access journal BMJ Open Respiratory Research revealed that poor quality sleep may increase a person’s genetic predisposition to asthma, potentially doubling their chance of being diagnosed with the illness. A healthy sleep pattern seems to be linked to a lower risk of asthma, prompting the researchers to suggest that spotting and treating sleep disorders early on might lessen the risks, irrespective of genetic predisposition. People with asthma often report sleep disturbances, including broken/short sleep and insomnia. But it’s not clear if sleep quality itself might influence asthma risk, or whether healthy sleep patterns might lessen this risk, say the researchers. In a bid to find out, they drew on 455,405 UK Biobank participants who were between 38 and 73 years old when enrolled between 2006 and 2010. Participants were asked about their sleep patterns, based on five specific traits: early or late chronotype (‘morning lark’ or ‘night owl’); sleep duration; insomnia; snoring; and excessive daytime sleepiness. A healthy sleep pattern was defined as early chronotype; clocking up 7-9 hours of sleep every night; never or rare insomnia; no snoring; and no frequent daytime sleepiness.Based on their responses, 73,223 people met the criteria for a healthy sleep pattern; 284,267 an intermediate sleep pattern; and 97,915 a poor sleep pattern.The genetic make-up of all UK Biobank participants is routinely mapped, and a genetic asthma risk score for each of the 455,405 people in this study was drawn up according to the number of genetic variants associated with asthma in their genome.