Joint association of physical activity and sleep duration with risk of all-cause and cause-specific mortality: a population-based cohort study using accelerometry

Aims: To investigate the joint association of accelerometer-measured physical activity (PA) and sleep duration with mortality risk.

Methods and results: A 7-day accelerometer recording was performed on 92 221 participants (age 62.4 ± 7.8 years; 56.4% women) from the UK Biobank between February 2013 and December 2015. We divided sleep duration into three groups (short, normal, and long), total volume of PA into three levels according to tertiles (high, intermediate, low), and moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA) into two groups based on the World Health Organization guidelines. The mortality outcomes were prospectively collected through the death registry. Over a median follow-up of 7.0 years, 3080 adults died, of which 1074 died from cardiovascular disease (CVD) and 1871 from cancer. The associations of PA and sleep duration with mortality risk were all in a curvilinear dose-response pattern (Pnonlinearity <0.001). PA and sleep duration had additive and multiplicative interactions on mortality risk (Pinteraction <0.05). Compared with the participants with guideline-recommended MVPA and normal sleep duration, those without recommended MVPA but having short or long sleep duration were at a higher risk for all-cause mortality [short sleep: hazard ratio (HR) = 1.88; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.61-2.20; long sleep: HR = 1.69; 95% CI, 1.49-1.90]. A higher volume of PA or recommended MVPA attenuated the detrimental effects of short or long sleep duration on all-cause and CVD mortality risks.

Conclusion: MVPA meeting recommendations or a higher volume of PA at any intensity potentially diminished the adverse effects on all-cause and cause-specific mortality associated with short and long sleep duration.