Exploring the association between sleep duration and cancer risk in middle-aged and older Chinese adults - observations from a representative cohort study (2011–2020)

Sep 21, 2026

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A prospective cohort study examined how sleep duration relates to cancer incidence among 9,996 middle-aged and older Chinese adults, with a median 9-year follow-up and over 88,790 person-years. Cancer incidence and sleep duration were self-reported, and associations were estimated using Cox proportional hazards models adjusted for age, gender, lifestyle factors, and comorbidities. Short sleep (<6 h) increased cancer risk, especially digestive and respiratory cancers, while longer sleep showed non-uniform effects.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryHealthcare

FormatPDF

Pages10

Reading Time25 min

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Abstract

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Methods

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Jiang et al. BMC Public Health (2024) 24:1819 BMC Public Health [https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-024-19313-z](https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-024-19313-z) RESEARCH Open Access Exploring the association between sleep duration and cancer risk in middle-aged and older Chinese adults: observations from a representative cohort study (2011–2020) Yang Jiang 1†, Xinyue Gu2†, Xiao Yang3, Aidi Sun4 and Huixin Sun5* Abstract Background This prospective cohort study aimed to investigate the relationship between sleep duration and cancer incidence among 9996 participants over a median follow-up period of 9 years. Methods Participants without cancer at baseline were followed for over 88,790 person-years. The incidence of cancer and sleep duration was self-reported. The relationship between sleep duration and cancer incidence was analyzed using Cox proportional hazards models adjusted for various confounding factors, including age, gender, lifestyle factors, and comorbidities. Results During the follow-up, 325 participants were diagnosed with incident cancer, resulting in an incidence rate of 20.49 per 1000 person-years. After adjusting for confounders, a total sleep duration of less than 6 h was significantly associated with an increased risk of cancer (HR: 1. 27; 95% CI: 1.01–1. 61) . This association was particularly strong for cancers in the digestive and respiratory systems (HR: 1.41; 95% CI: 1.03–1. 93) . Longer sleep durations (> 9 h) showed a potential increase in cancer risk, but results were not consistently significant. Age-stratified analyses revealed a similar significant increase in cancer incidence among individuals aged 60 years or younger with less than 6 h of sleep per day, showing a 35% increase in overall cancer risk and an 83% increase in digestive and respiratory system cancer. No significant association was found between nocturnal sleep durations or daytime naps and cancer incidence. However, a significant interaction was observed between daytime naps longer than 30 min and cancer incidence in women (p = 0 . 041) . Conclusions We observed that short sleep duration may increase the risk of cancer, particularly cancers in the digestive and respiratory systems. Additionally, while longer sleep durations might also increase cancer risk, this finding requires validation with larger sample sizes. Keywords Sleep duration, Cancer incidence, Middle-aged and elderly, Aging, Chinese middle aged and elderly †Yang Jiang and Xinyue Gu contributed equally to this work. *Correspondence: Huixin Sun [sunhx@hrbmu.edu.cn](sunhx@hrbmu.edu.cn) Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © The Author(s) 2024. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit [http://creativecommons.org/l](http://creativecommons.org/l)icenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ([http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/](http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. Jiang et al. BMC Public Health (2024) 24:1819 Background Cancer is one of the leading causes of death and a main economic burden in China, with an incr

FAQs

What did the study investigate regarding sleep and cancer?

It assessed the relationship between sleep duration and cancer incidence among middle-aged and older Chinese adults using a representative cohort study from 2011 to 2020.

What sleep duration was linked to higher cancer risk?

Total sleep duration of less than 6 hours was significantly associated with an increased risk of cancer after adjusting for confounders.

Were there differences by cancer type and subgroup analyses?

The association was particularly strong for digestive and respiratory system cancers, and age-stratified analyses showed a significant increase among individuals aged 60 or younger with less than 6 hours of sleep.

Sep 21, 2026

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