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American Journal of Epidemiology Advance Access originally published online on August 3, 2009
American Journal of Epidemiology 2009 170(7):814-816; doi:10.1093/aje/kwp228
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American Journal of Epidemiology © The Author 2009. Published by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org.

Invited Commentary

Invited Commentary: Understanding the Role of Sleep

Sanjay R. Patel

Correspondence to Dr. Sanjay R. Patel, Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine, University Hospitals Case Medical Center and Case Western Reserve University, 2103 Cornell Road, Room 6126, Cleveland, OH 44106 (E-mail: srp20{at}case.edu).

Received for publication May 6, 2009. Accepted for publication May 18, 2009.

Chronic sleep deprivation is increasingly entertained as a novel risk factor for obesity. However, the vast majority of studies on this topic have relied on unvalidated subjective measures of habitual sleep habits. The accompanying paper by Lauderdale et al. (Am J Epidemiol. 2009;170(7):805–813) presents the first longitudinal analysis of the relation between sleep duration and weight change by using an objective assessment of sleep. The lack of evidence for an association in this work suggests that the absolute time slept may not be important for weight regulation but raises questions as to what self-reported sleep duration is measuring. One intriguing possibility is that self-reported sleep may reflect the time spent in deeper stages of sleep, which physiologic studies suggest may be more relevant from a metabolic standpoint. Further research into the relation between sleep quantity and quality relative to obesity by use of more refined measures of sleep is needed to identify which, if any, aspects of sleep are important in weight homeostasis.

body mass index; longitudinal studies; obesity; sleep apnea syndromes; sleep deprivation; snoring

Abbreviations: CARDIA, Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults


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Related articles in Am. J. Epidemiol.:

Cross-sectional and Longitudinal Associations Between Objectively Measured Sleep Duration and Body Mass Index: The CARDIA Sleep Study
Diane S. Lauderdale, Kristen L. Knutson, Paul J. Rathouz, Lijing L. Yan, Stephen B. Hulley, and Kiang Liu
Am. J. Epidemiol. 2009 170: 805-813. [Abstract] [Full Text]  



This article has been cited by other articles:


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D. S. Lauderdale, K. L. Knutson, P. J. Rathouz, L. L. Yan, S. B. Hulley, and K. Liu
Lauderdale et al. Respond to "Understanding the Role of Sleep"
Am. J. Epidemiol., October 1, 2009; 170(7): 817 - 818.
[Full Text] [PDF]


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