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14 July 2008
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Sleep duration linked to prostate cancer risk
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MedWire News: Men who sleep for at least 9 hours a night are significantly less likely to develop prostate cancer than those who sleep for less than 6 hours, research suggests.
A number of studies have suggested that regularly getting a good night's sleep is associated with a reduced risk of certain diseases and conditions, including breast cancer, explain Dr M Kakizaki and colleagues from Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine in Sendai, Japan.
But they add: "There has been no study of sleep duration and prostate cancer risk."
The researchers therefore enrolled 22,230 men, aged between 40 and 79 years, who completed a questionnaire on average sleep duration at the start of the study.
Over the course of the 7-year monitoring period, 127 of the men developed prostate cancer.
After accounting for each participant's age, the team found that men who slept for less then 6 hours were 34% more likely to develop prostate cancer than men who slept for between 7 and 8 hours a night.
Furthermore, men who slept for at least 9 hours a night were around 50% less likely to develop prostate cancer than those who slept for less than 6 hours.
"We have found a significant inverse association between sleep duration and the risk of prostate cancer incidence in Japanese men," the researchers write in the British Journal of Cancer.
They suggest that increased levels of the sleep hormone melatonin may play a role in the association between longer sleep duration and a reduced risk of prostate cancer.
Br J Cancer 2008; 99: 176-178
http://www.nature.com/bjc/journal/v99/n1/abs/6604425a.html
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