The relationship of sleep duration with premature menopause in American adults: data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) from 2005-2018

Abstract

Objective The correlation between sleep time and menopausal age is still unclear. This study investigated the causal relationship between sleep duration and premature menopause based on the National Health and Nutrition Survey (NHANES) database. Materials and methods This study included 4055 female participants in the NHANES database from 2005 to 2018, and used a logistic regression model to evaluate the relationship between sleep duration and menopausal age. Draw RCS curve to illustrate the relationship between sleep duration and menopause age. Short term sleep was defined as ≤ 7 hours of sleep per day, normal sleep was defined as 7.0-8.9 hours of sleep, and long-term sleep was defined a ≥ 9 hours of sleep per day. Premature menopause was defined as menopause before the age of 40. Results The average age of 4055 female participants was 62.26 ± 11.42.There was a significant correlation between sleep duration and menopausal age (P < 0.05).The results of the logistic regression model showed that short-term sleep (≤ 7 hours) was associated with premature menopausal age (≤ 40) (OR = 0.80; 95% CI: 0.66–0.98; P = 0.028), and after adjusting for potential confounding factors, short-term sleep (≤ 7 hours) was also associated with premature menopausal age (≤ 40) (OR = 0.82; 95% CI: 0.67–1.99; P = 0.049).The RCS results showed a U-shaped association between sleep time and menopausal age (P < 0.001), with a threshold of 7 hours for sleep time. Whether sleep time increases or decreases, the risk ratio of premature menopause shows an increasing trend. Conclusion Our cross-sectional analysis elucidated the U-shaped relationship between sleep duration and menopausal age among the American age group.