Background: Inadequate sleep duration potentially increases the risk of allergic asthma; yet, the effect of different sleep duration on asthma-related episodes/attacks and emergency department (ED) visits has remained unclear. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the association between sleep duration, asthma-related episodes/attacks and ED visits.
Methods: This study included 1526 asthma participants from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System Questionnaire during 2013– 2017. Self-reported sleep duration was classified into three groups: ≤ 6 h (short), 7 h to 8 h (optimal) and ≥ 9 h (long). Generalized additive model with binomial or Poisson regression was used to complete all statistical analyses.
Results: During a 12-month period, 857 participants reported acute episodes/attacks of asthma, and 279 participants reported asthma-related ED visits. Asthmatics with ED visits harbored significantly lower mean sleep duration (6.50 h vs 7.01 h, adjusted OR=0.93, 95% CI: 0.88– 0.98) than those without episodes/attacks. After adjusting the potential confounding factors, the participants with long sleep duration were associated with lower risk of asthma-related episodes/attacks (adjusted OR=0.59, 95% CI:  0.41– 0.86) than those with short sleep duration. The prevalence (adjusted OR=0.67, 95% CI:  0.47– 0.94) and frequency (adjusted OR=0.83, 95% CI:  0.69– 0.9996) of asthma-related ED visits among short sleepers were significantly higher than that among optimal sleepers. The differences of asthma-related episodes/attacks and ED visits between long and optimal sleepers were statistically insignificant.
Conclusion: Our study demonstrated that asthmatics with short sleep duration were associated with highest prevalence of asthma-related episodes/attacks and ED visits among the three sleep duration groups.
Keywords: sleep duration, asthma, attack