Association Between Sleep and Breast Cancer Incidence Among Postmenopausal Women in the Women's Health Initiative
Overview
Authors
Affiliations
Study Objectives: To determine whether the duration of sleep, sleep quality, insomnia, or sleep disturbance was associated with incident breast cancer in the Women's Health Initiative (WHI).
Design: Prospective cohort study.
Setting: Women enrolled in one of the Clinical Trial (CT) arms or the Observational Study (OS) from the WHI conducted in the United States.
Participants: This study included 110,011 women age 50 to 79 years with no history of cancer.
Measurements And Results: Typical sleep duration, sleep quality, and other self-reported sleep measures over the past 4 weeks were assessed during the screening visits for both the CT and OS participants. The presence of insomnia and level of sleep disturbance was calculated from an index of the WHI Insomnia Rating Scale. The outcome for this study was primary, invasive breast cancer. A total of 5,149 incident cases of breast cancer were identified in this study. No statistically significant associations were found between sleep duration, sleep quality, insomnia, or level of sleep disturbance with the risk of breast cancer after multivariable adjustment. A positive trend was observed for increasing sleeping duration with the risk of estrogen receptor positive breast cancer, but the association estimates for each sleep duration category were weak and nonsignificant.
Conclusions: This study does not provide strong support for an association between self-reported sleep duration, sleep quality, insomnia, or sleep disturbance with the risk of breast cancer.
A narrative review of sleep and breast cancer: from epidemiology to mechanisms.
Zhang B, Tang M, Li X Cancer Causes Control. 2024; .
PMID: 39731679 DOI: 10.1007/s10552-024-01951-8.
Sleep disorders and cancer incidence: examining duration and severity of diagnosis among veterans.
Burch J, Delage A, Zhang H, McLain A, Ray M, Miller A Front Oncol. 2024; 14:1336487.
PMID: 38469244 PMC: 10927008. DOI: 10.3389/fonc.2024.1336487.
Al-Sharman A, Al-Sarhan A, Aburub A, Shorman R, Bani-Ahmad A, Siengsukon C Front Psychol. 2024; 15:1318584.
PMID: 38362250 PMC: 10867976. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1318584.
Eyes Wide Open: Sleep as a Potential Contributor to Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Cancer.
Barber L, McCullough L, Johnson D Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev. 2024; 33(4):471-479.
PMID: 38270540 PMC: 10990828. DOI: 10.1158/1055-9965.EPI-23-1117.
Von Behren J, Goldberg D, Hurley S, Clague DeHart J, Wang S, Reynolds P Cancer Causes Control. 2023; 35(4):597-604.
PMID: 37940783 PMC: 10960753. DOI: 10.1007/s10552-023-01817-5.