Association of short sleep duration with impaired glucose tolerance or diabetes mellitus

Aims/Introduction: To examine the cross‐sectional relationship between sleep duration and impaired glucose tolerance (IGT), including diabetes mellitus (DM), we analyzed a large‐scale healthy workers database in Japan. Materials and Methods: We examined the baseline database of 4143 participants (3415 men and 728 women) aged 19–69 years. Sleep duration of participants was categorized into four groups: <6, 6 to <7, 7 to <8 and ≥8 h. The physical activity of each participant was classified according to the International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ). We defined IGT including DM (IGT/DM) in the present study according to previous studies as follows: fasting blood sugar level ≥110 mg/dL, or if <8 h after meals ≥140 mg/dL, or on medication for diabetes mellitus, or those diagnosed as having DM. Logistic regression was applied to estimate the odds ratio (OR) to examine the relationship between IGT/DM, sleep duration and other related factors. Results: The number of participants with IGT/DM was 402 (9.7%). The factors that significantly associated with IGT/DM were age (OR 1.08, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.07–1.10, P < 0.001), high blood pressure (OR 1.94, CI 1.52–2.47, P < 0.001), and <6 h of sleep duration in comparison with 6 to <7 h sleep (OR 2.32, CI 1.18–4.55, P = 0.015). The associations of difficulty in sleep initiation, IPAQ classification, current smoking and alcohol intake with IGT/DM were not statistically significant. Conclusions: Our results showed that shorter sleep duration (<6 h of sleep duration per night) was associated with a risk of IGT/DM independent of other lifestyle habits and metabolic risk factors. (J Diabetes Invest, doi: 10.1111/j.2040‐1124.2011.00114.x, 2011)