Accelerometer-derived real-world sleep stages and risk of incident diseases: A UK Biobank cohort study and phenome-wide association analysis
A UK Biobank analysis linked measured sleep stages with later disease incidence across a broad set of outcomes.
TL;DR
- The PLOS Medicine study analyzed accelerometer-derived sleep stages and incident disease in a UK Biobank cohort.
- It reported that greater REM sleep was associated with lower risk across 83 diseases; deep sleep was associated with lower risk across seven.
- The authors describe associations; the observational cohort does not show that changing sleep stages prevents disease.
The primary paper describes a UK Biobank cohort and a phenome-wide association analysis of accelerometer-derived sleep stages and incident diseases. [1]
ScienceDaily and EurekAlert reported the study’s headline result: greater REM sleep was associated with lower risk across 83 diseases, while deep sleep was linked to seven. [1] [2] [3]
These are observational associations. They do not establish that longer REM sleep causes lower disease risk. [1] [2]
Why it matters
The breadth of the reported associations makes the result relevant to sleep research, while the observational design limits causal conclusions.
Editor's note
Study title is verbatim from PLOS Medicine. The 83-disease figure is an association, not a prevention claim.