Insufficient Sleep and Risk of Prostate Cancer in a Large Swedish Cohort.

STUDY OBJECTIVE

There are some data to suggest that insufficient sleep, including short sleep duration and sleep disruption, may be associated with an increased risk of cancer. We investigated the association between sleep duration and sleep disruption and risk of prostate cancer.

DESIGN

Prospective cohort study.

SETTING

Sweden.

PARTICIPANTS

A total of 14,041 men in the Swedish National March Cohort.

INTERVENTIONS

None.

MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS

Habitual sleep duration and sleep disruption were self-reported in 1997. Prostate cancer diagnoses, including lethal (metastases at diagnosis or death from prostate cancer) and advanced (stage T4, N1, or M1 at diagnosis or death from prostate cancer), were determined from linkage to nationwide cancer registries through 2010. We conducted Cox proportional hazards regression adjusted for potential confounding variables. During 13 years of follow-up, we identified 785 cases of incident prostate cancer, including 118 lethal and 127 advanced cases. Four percent of men reported sleeping 5 h or less a night, and 2% reported sleeping 9 h or more per night. We found no association between sleep duration and risk of prostate cancer overall or for advanced/lethal disease. We also did not find an association between prostate cancer and sleep disruption, as defined by difficulty falling asleep, difficulty maintaining sleep, sleep quality, and restorative power of sleep.

CONCLUSIONS

In this large prospective study from Sweden, we found no association between habitual sleep duration or sleep disruption and risk of prostate cancer.