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Increased altitudes change sleep status among Chinese population

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Abstract

Sleep is integral to human health. Accumulating evidence has revealed that sleep characteristics could be influenced by altitudes. However, few studies explored what the trajectories of sleep status are along with the altitudes. Therefore, this study aims to find the relationship between altitudes and sleep status using data from CHARLS, a nationwide survey data from China. The generalized additive model and generalized additive mixed-effects model were used to explore the association between sleep status and altitudes. Age, gender, education level, and other common confounding factors were included in the models as covariates. The sleep duration showed a rapid increase trend after the altitude of 1600 m. The probabilities of long sleep duration were increased with the evaluation of altitudes (edf = 1.945, P = 0.004), while the similar statistically significant change was not observed for short sleep duration (edf = 2.204, P = 0.193). Gender, residence, and ethnicity were the main influencing factors for the increase in sleep duration as altitude increased. The high-altitude environment could have effects on the sleep status of individuals, especially on the sleep duration. Long sleep duration was found more prevalent among highlanders. This study shed light on the underlying relationship between altitudes and sleep status which could provide clues for further mechanism studies.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, [Zeng], upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge all research assistants for their contribution to this study.

Funding

This work was supported by the [Sichuan Applied Psychology Research Center] under Grant [number CSXL-22229].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Epidemiology and Statistics, Chengdu Medical College, No. 783, Xindu Avenue, Xindu District, Chengdu, Sichuan, China

    Haolin Jiang, Wen Su, Xiuming Wu, Qinglong Yang, Haodong Xian, Weizhong Chen & Ziqian Zeng

Authors
  1. Haolin Jiang
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  2. Wen Su
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  3. Xiuming Wu
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  4. Qinglong Yang
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  5. Haodong Xian
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  6. Weizhong Chen
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  7. Ziqian Zeng
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Contributions

JHL and SW contributed equally and were responsible for data extraction, data analyses, and the manuscript writing. CWZ and ZZQ were involved in conducting data analyses and manuscript revision. WXM, YQL and XHD contributed to the data interpretation. ZZQ and CWZ contributed equally.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ziqian Zeng.

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The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Ethical approval

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by CHARLS was ethically approved by the Ethics Review Board of the Peking University (approval number: IRB00001052-11015), and each respondent signed an informed consent form.

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Jiang, H., Su, W., Wu, X. et al. Increased altitudes change sleep status among Chinese population. Sleep Biol. Rhythms (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41105-024-00527-y

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