Gout and Poor Sleep Patterns: A Vicious Cycle

A healthy sleep pattern, typically 7-9 hours every night, is associated with a decreased risk for new-onset gout, according to the findings published in the Journal of Psychosomatic Research. A healthy sleep pattern was described as no or rare insomnia, no snoring, and no frequent excessive daytime sleepiness.

“Sleep is multidimensional, and various sleep behaviors, such as sleep duration, chronotype, snoring, insomnia, and daytime sleepiness, are often clustered together,” the researchers explained. “Poor sleep behaviors, alone or in combination, were associated with increased risk of hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and chronic kidney disease, all of which are risk factors of gout.”

Researchers from Southern Medical University in China collected data from 403,630 healthy patients without gout from the UK Biobank, a prospective population-based study of UK residents. The participants were evaluated based on sleep behaviors and genetic risk score (GRS).

A sleep score of 4 to 5 points was categorized as healthy sleep, 2 to 3 points as intermediate sleep, and 0 to 1 points as poor sleep. Over a median follow-up of 12 years, 1.1% of the participants (n=4270) developed new-onset gout.

When stratified by sleep, “risk for gout was lower among those with a score of 5 (aHR, 0.79; p =.011) and 4 (aHR, 0.80; p =.001) compared with patients with a sleep score of 0 to 1.”

When stratified by GRS, risk for new-onset gout was lower among those with low genetic risk and intermediate or healthy sleep or with intermediate genetic risk and healthy sleep vs individuals with poor sleep.

“If further confirmed, our findings highlight the importance of primary prevention of gout by improving sleep patterns in participants with relatively low genetic risks of gout, as well as more comprehensive intervention strategies for participants with high genetic risks of gout,” the report concluded.

Reference:
Qimeng W, Panpan H, Ziliang Y et al. Sleep patterns, genetic susceptibility, and risk of new-onset gout: The UK Biobank prospective cohort study. Journal of Psychosomatic Research. 2023: 170. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychores.2023.111381