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Population study: followed a group

Study that followed 25,430 Swedish adults: death risk lowest at 7 hours of sleep

Åkerstedt and colleagues · Journal of sleep research · 2022

Original title: Sleep duration and mortality, influence of age, retirement, and occupational group.

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What the study found

Mixed

Death risk was U-shaped: HR 1.24 (95% CI 1.10, 1.39) under 5 h and HR 1.30 (95% CI 1.12, 1.51) at 9 h or more. The lowest risk was at 7 h, with low risk across 5 to 8 h, and the U-shape held only for people over 60.3.

The study at a glance

Type of study
Population study: followed a group
Who or what was studied
25,430 people · Swedish adults, working and retired, in a national cohort
What was tested
Sleep hours (under 5 h, 5 to 8 h, 9 h or more) compared with 7 h, then deaths
What it measured
The question itself: death, heart disease and other health outcomes
Who has a stake
No disclosure in PubMed
No disclosure in PubMed.
Journal
Journal of sleep research, 2022
Source
PubMed record 34741361. This page is based on the abstract only.

How much this study counts

  • –Shows a link, not a cause: people chose their own habits, and other differences between them may explain the result.
  • ✓Followed people over time, so habits were recorded before the outcome happened.
  • ✓Large: 25,430 people.
  • ✓Measured the question itself: death, heart disease and other health outcomes.
  • •The PubMed record has no conflict-of-interest statement.
  • •Summarized from the PubMed abstract only. The full paper may hold details the abstract leaves out.

✓ Strength– Limit• Note

These points come from fixed rules about the type of study, its size and length, what it measured, and who has a stake. Every study on Digestery gets the same rules.

Where this study sits

Each dot is one on-topic paper on this question. Steps near the top answer the question more directly.

↑ Stronger evidence

  1. Trials in people: death and chronic disease

    0

    Not done yet. This is the step that would answer the question.

  2. Trials in people: other measures

    1

    1 benefit

  3. Trials in people: lab tests or safety

    0

    None among the papers we read.

  4. Population studies

    11

    5 benefit, 4 mixed, 2 no difference

    ↑ This study is the ringed dot

  5. Blood levels and genes

    1

    1 benefit

↓ Weaker evidence

  • Points to benefit
  • Mixed
  • No difference
  • No direction
  • Points to harm

How it fits with the other research

The short answer to “How much sleep do adults need for good health?”

Lowest risk at about 7 hours.

Confidence: low. Based on 22 on-topic papers.

Read the full answer

Of the other 10 papers on the same step: 5 benefit, 3 mixed, 2 no difference. This one found mixed.

  • Quoted in “What we found”: Death risk was lowest at 7 hours in two cohorts: 322 721 adults in Japan, China, Singapore and Korea, and 25,430 adults in Sweden.
  • Part of the finding “Death risk is lowest near 7 hours”.

Other papers on the same step

See all 22 studies on this question

How this page was made

Label

First read of the abstract
Claude Sonnet
Independent second read
Claude Haiku
Differences settled
The two reads agreed on every checked field. Claude Opus 5.5.
Headline
Claude Sonnet, from the checked study record. A script checked its numbers and wording.
Numbers
Checked against the abstract by a script
“How much this study counts”
Fixed rules, the same for every study
Source check by a person
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