Sleep and your risk of hyperuricemia

Sleep deprivation, especially common during postmenopause, has been linked with a number of health problems, including hyperuricemia (elevated serum uric acid), which can often lead to gout and other life-threatening conditions such as heart disease. This study suggests that weekend catch-up sleep may minimize the risk of hyperuricemia in postmenopausal women. 

Hyperuricemia is most often associated with gout, an increasingly common form of arthritis characterized by severe pain, redness, and tenderness in joints. Pain and inflammation occur when too much uric acid crystallizes and deposits in the joints. In addition, hyperuricemia is associated with metabolic syndrome, diabetes, hypertension, and kidney and cardiovascular diseases. The prevalence of hyperuricemia increases with age in all populations and especially in women after menopause. That’s because, according to previous studies, hyperuricemia is inversely related to estrogen levels.

A suggested approach to lowering the risk of hyperuricemia is adequate sleep duration that unfortunately becomes more of a challenge during the postmenopausal phase. Sleep is known to be essential for many people’s immune response, cognition, performance, psychological state, and disease status. Several studies have shown that too little or too much sleep is related to poor health problems such as hyperuricemia, hyperlipidemia, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, and even mortality.

In this latest study involving nearly 1,900 participants, the researchers hypothesized that weekend catchup sleep could be a solution to making up for lost sleep during the week and effectively lowering the risk of hyperuricemia in postmenopausal women, who often struggle to get sufficient sleep. This is the first known study to investigate the relation between weekend catch-up sleep and hyperuricemia in postmenopausal women.

Study results suggest that weekend catch-up sleep is linked with a lower prevalence of hyperuricemia in postmenopausal women with insufficient sleep. Further studies are required to identify the causal relationships between sleep recovery and hyperuricemia in postmenopausal women.

Abstract

Objectives: Hyperuricemia is associated with metabolic and cardiovascular diseases and mortality. Efforts to lower the risk of hyperuricemia in various ways are needed as the prevalence of these diseases increases in postmenopausal women. Studies have shown that one of these methods is associated with adequate sleep duration, which is related to a low risk of hyperuricemia. Considering that it is difficult for people to get enough sleep in modern society, this study hypothesized that weekend catch-up sleep could be an alternative. To our knowledge, no past study has investigated the relation between weekend catch-up sleep and hyperuricemia in postmenopausal women. Hence, the aim of this research was to estimate the relation between weekend catch-up sleep and hyperuricemia with insufficient sleep in postmenopausal women during weekday or workday.

Methods: This study included 1,877 participants extracted from the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey VII. The study population was divided into weekend catch-up sleep and non-weekend catch-up sleep groups. Odds ratios with 95% confidence intervals were derived using multiple logistic regression analysis.

Results: Weekend catch-up sleep had a significantly lower prevalence of hyperuricemia after adjusting for confounders (odds ratio, 0.758 [95% confidence interval, 0.576-0.997]). In a subgroup analysis, weekend catch-up sleep of 1 to 2 hours was significantly correlated with a lower prevalence of hyperuricemia after adjusting for confounders (odds ratio: 0.522 [95% confidence interval, 0.323-0.845]).

Conclusions: Weekend catch-up sleep had a decreased prevalence of hyperuricemia in postmenopausal women with sleep deprivation.

Reference

Soo Min Son, Eun-Ju Park, Ryuk Jun Kwon, Young Hye Cho, Sang Yeoup Lee, Jung In Choi, Youngin Lee, Sae Rom Lee, Yun Jin Kim, Jeong Gyu Lee, Yu Hyeon Yi, Young Jin Tak, Seung Hun Lee, Gyu Lee Kim, Young Jin Ra. Association between weekend catch-up sleep and hyperuricemia with insufficient sleep in postmenopausal Korean women: a nationwide cross-sectional study Menopause 2023 May 16;doi: 10.1097/GME.0000000000002186.

Content created May 2023