Many Adults Have Suboptimal Five-Year Sleep Trajectories

Suboptimal sleep trajectory linked to an increased risk for all-cause mortality

By Elana Gotkine HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, March 6, 2025 (HealthDay News) — A number of U.S. adults have suboptimal five-year sleep duration trajectories, with these trajectories associated with an increased risk for all-cause mortality, according to a study published online Feb. 27 in JAMA Network Open.

Kelsie M. Full, Ph.D., M.P.H., from Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, and colleagues examined the association of five-year sleep duration trajectories with all-cause and cause-specific mortality among U.S. adults aged 40 to 79 years from the Southern Community Cohort Study. The analyses included 46,928 participants; 63.3 and 36.7 percent self-identified as Black and White, respectively.

The researchers found that 66.4 percent of participants had suboptimal five-year sleep trajectories overall. Race varied across sleep trajectories, with Black participants accounting for 53.0 and 84.5 percent of participants in the optimal and long–short trajectories, respectively. There were 13,579 deaths during a median follow-up of 12.6 years. In fully adjusted models, suboptimal sleep trajectories were associated with as much as a 29 percent greater risk for all-cause mortality compared with the optimal sleep duration trajectory. The associations varied by race and household income, with White adults with greater household income having the greatest risk.

“Our findings support investigating changes in sleep duration as adults age and highlight the importance of maintaining healthy sleep durations throughout adulthood,” the authors write.