Too Little, Too Much: Poor Sleep Linked to Vessel Damage in Those With Diabetes

Key Takeaways

• Short and long sleep appears to contribute to damage of the small blood vessels among diabetics

• Older folks were particularly at risk for this complication

• Small blood vessel damage can lead to blindness, kidney failure, nerve damage, stroke and heart disease

MONDAY, July 15, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- Diabetics who sleep too little or too much are more likely to suffer damage to their small blood vessels, a condition that can cause organ damage throughout their bodies.

Short sleep duration is tied to a 2.6 times increased risk of small blood vessel damage, also known as microvascular disease, in people with diabetes, a new study reports.

Likewise, the study found long sleep duration was also linked to a 2.3 times increased risk of microvascular disease.

“In recently diagnosed type 2 diabetes patients, both short and long sleep durations are associated with a higher prevalence of microvascular disease compared to optimal sleep duration at night,” concluded the research team led by Mette Johansen and Thomas Oleson, with the Steno Diabetes Center Odense at the Odense University Hospital in Denmark.

Small blood vessel damage caused by diabetes can lead to a wide array of complications, including blindness, kidney failure, nerve damage, stroke and heart disease, experts say.

For this study, researchers tracked the sleep of nearly 400 people with type 2 diabetes. Short sleep was defined as less than seven hours, while long sleep was considered nine hours or more.

About 12% of the patients had short sleep and 28% had long sleep, on average, researchers found.

Further, researchers found that 38% of diabetics with short sleep and 31% with long sleep had small blood vessel damage.

Age radically increased the risk of short sleep, researchers found.

In patients aged 62 and older, short sleep was associated with a 5.7 times increased risk of small blood vessel disease, the results showed.

“Age amplifies the association between short sleep duration and microvascular disease, suggesting increased vulnerability among older individuals,” the research team wrote.

It might pay to include sleep as one of the factors to be addressed in people with diabetes, the team said. However, they acknowledged that more research is needed to better understand the effects of poor sleep on diabetics.

Researchers will present this study at the upcoming annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes, which takes place in Madrid this September.

Findings presented at medical meetings should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

More information

The American Diabetes Association has more on microvascular complications of diabetes .

SOURCE: Diabetologia, news release, July 11, 2024

What This Means For You

People with diabetes should try to get 7 to 9 hours of sleep for optimal health, research suggests.