Sex Differences in Sleep Duration among Older Adults with Self-Reported Diagnosis of Arthritis: National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 2009-2012.

Objective: Sleep is restorative, essential, and beneficial to health. Prevalences of some diseases have been associated with sleep duration. There are few studies in the literature on the relationship of sleep duration and arthritis stratified by sex in older adults. The purpose of this research is to investigate sleep duration among older adults in the United States who have self-reported diagnosis of arthritis.

Methods: A cross-sectional study design was used. The data source was the National Health and Nutrition Examination 2009-2010 and 2011-2012. Self-reported diagnosis of arthritis and sleep duration were the variables of interest.

Results: There were 4,888 participants, aged 50 years and above, of whom 41.6% self-reported having a diagnosis of arthritis, and 60.6% were female. Of the people who had a self-reported diagnosis of arthritis, 15.2% reported sleeping 2-5 hours as compared with 10.9% of the people who did not have a self-reported diagnosis of arthritis ( = .0004). In bivariate analysis of self-reported diagnosis of arthritis and sleep stratified by sex, there were significantly more people with self-reported diagnosis of arthritis who slept 2-5 hours for both women ( = 0.0192) and men ( = 0.0231). The overall relationship remained significant in adjusted overall logistic regression comparing for self-reported diagnosis of arthritis for 2-5 hours of sleep (with 6-7 hours of sleep as the reference) (odds ratio: 1.35 [95% CI: 1.08, 1.70; = 0.0103]); however, when the data were stratified by sex, the association failed to reach significance.

Conclusion: In this analysis of noninstitutionalized older adults in the United States, the prevalence of a self-reported diagnosis of arthritis was associated with shorter sleep duration in the overall analyses, but the association failed to reach significance when stratified by sex.