Insomnia a new risk factor for myocardial infarction?

Insomnia a new risk factor for myocardial infarction?

Laugsand et al have found evidence linking insomnia and myocardial infarction [1]. They followed up over 52,000 individuals for the first acute myocardial infarction and noted over 2,300 incident acute myocardial infarctions over the 11.4 years of follow up. They adjusted for various factors like age, sex, marital status, education, shift work, blood pressure, lipids, diabetes mellitus, body mass index, physical activity, smoking, and alcohol consumption in their analysis. Difficulties in the onset and maintenance of sleep as well as the feeling of non restorative sleep were associated with an increase in the risk of myocardial infarction. Those with difficulties in initiating sleep had the highest risk (hazard ratio 1.45) and those with non restorative sleep the lowest risk with hazard ratio of 1.27 and an intermediate risk for those who had difficulty in maintaining sleep (hazard ratio 1.3). There was also a dose dependent association between the number of insomnia symptoms and acute myocardial infarction (P for trend 0.003).

Reference

1. Lars E Laugsand, Lars J Vatten, Carl Platou, Imre Janszky. Insomnia and the Risk of Acute Myocardial Infarction – A Population Study. Circulation. 2011 Nov 8;124(19):2073-81.