Diabetes careJul 17, 2024

Irregular Sleep Length Measured by Activity Trackers Linked to Type 2 Diabetes Risk in UK Adults

Circadian Biology Weekly Brief ↗PubMed ↗DOI ↗

Updated Mar 20, 2026

Abstract

Over 7 years of follow-up, 2,058 cases of diabetes were identified among 84,421 participants.

Higher variability in sleep duration is associated with an increased risk of developing diabetes.
Compared to a sleep duration variability of 30 minutes or less, those with variability of 61-90 minutes have a 54% higher risk, and those with variability of 91 minutes or more have a 59% higher risk.
A nonlinear relationship suggests that individuals with a sleep duration variability greater than 60 minutes have a 34% higher risk of diabetes compared to those with 60 minutes or less.
Adjustment for lifestyle factors and body weight reduced the strength of the association, but it remained significant.
The association between irregular sleep duration and diabetes risk is stronger in individuals with a lower genetic risk for diabetes.

Simplified

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the association between irregular sleep duration and incident diabetes in a U.K. population over 7 years of follow-up.

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: Among 84,421 UK Biobank participants (mean age 62 years) who were free of diabetes at the time of providing accelerometer data in 2013-2015 and prospectively followed until May 2022, sleep duration variability was quantified by the within-person SD of 7-night accelerometer-measured sleep duration. We used Cox proportional hazard models to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) for incident diabetes (identified from medical records, death register, and/or self-reported diagnosis) according to categories of sleep duration SD.

RESULTS: There were 2,058 incident diabetes cases over 622,080 person-years of follow-up. Compared with sleep duration SD ≤ 30 min, the HR (95% CI) was 1.15 (0.99, 1.33) for 31-45 min, 1.28 (1.10, 1.48) for 46-60 min, 1.54 (1.32, 1.80) for 61-90 min, and 1.59 (1.33, 1.90) for ≥91 min, after adjusting for age, sex, and race. We found a nonlinear relationship (P nonlinearity 0.0002), with individuals with a sleep duration SD of >60 vs. ≤60 min having 34% higher diabetes risk (95% CI 1.22, 1.47). Further adjustment for lifestyle, comorbidities, environmental factors, and adiposity attenuated the association (HR comparing sleep duration SD of >60 vs. ≤60 min: 1.11; 95% CI 1.01, 1.22). The association was stronger among individuals with lower diabetes polygenic risk score (PRS; P interaction ≤ 0.0264) and longer sleep duration (P interaction ≤ 0.0009).

CONCLUSIONS: Irregular sleep duration was associated with higher diabetes risk, particularly in individuals with a lower diabetes PRS and longer sleep duration.

Full Text

Full text is available at the source.

View Full Text ↗

Funding

Competing interests

Duality of Interest. A.P. has received research funding from Versalux and Delos, and he is a director and founder of Circadian Health Innovations PTY LTD. No other potential conflicts of interest relevant to this article were reported.

PubMed

Irregular Sleep Length Measured by Activity Trackers Linked to Type 2 Diabetes Risk in UK Adults

Abstract

Full Text

Funding

Competing interests

You found one interesting study. We’ll send the next 7.

What Lands in Your Inbox Each Week:

Recent issues from the circadian biology brief

Abstract

Full Text

Funding

Competing interests

Related papers

You found one interesting study. We’ll send the next 7.

What Lands in Your Inbox Each Week:

Recent issues from the circadian biology brief