Sleep patterns, genetic susceptibility, and risk of cirrhosis among individuals with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease

The associations between sleep patterns or behaviors and the risk of cirrhosis and the influence of genetic susceptibility on these associations among NAFLD participants remain inadequately elucidated.

This study conducted a prospective follow-up of 112,196 NAFLD participants diagnosed at baseline from the UK Biobank cohort study. Five sleep behaviors were collected to measure a healthy sleep score. Five genetic variants were used to construct a polygenic risk score. We used Cox proportional hazard model to assess hazard ratios (HR) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for incidence of cirrhosis.

During the follow-up, 592 incident cirrhosis cases were documented. Healthy sleep pattern was associated with reduced risk of cirrhosis in a dose–response manner (p_trend < 0.001). Participants with favourable sleep score (versus unfavourable sleep score) had an HR of 0.55 for cirrhosis risk (95% CI 0.39–0.78). Multivariable-adjusted HRs (95% CIs) of cirrhosis incidence for NAFLDs with no frequent insomnia, sleeping for 7–8 h per day, and no excessive daytime dozing behaviors were 0.73 (0.61–0.87), 0.79 (0.66–0.93), and 0.69 (0.50–0.95), respectively. Compared with participants with favourable sleep pattern and low genetic risk, those with unfavourable sleep pattern and high genetic risk had higher risks of cirrhosis incidence (HR 3.16, 95% CI 1.88–5.33). In addition, a significant interaction between chronotype and genetic risk was detected for the incidence of cirrhosis (p for multiplicative interaction = 0.004).

An association was observed between healthy sleep pattern and decreased risk of cirrhosis among NAFLD participants, regardless of low or high genetic risk.