Sleep Medicine 9 (2008) 808 www.elsevier.

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Letter to the Editor

Sleep duration and body mass index Several reports have recently presented that there are clear associations between short sleep duration and elevated body mass index (BMI) [13]. Their study designs are population-based, cross-sectional studies. To clarify whether those relationships also exist in Asian subjects, we conducted re-analysis as follows. We previously presented the association between obesity and hypertension or hyperlipidemia for inhabitants in Gunma Prefecture, Japan [4]. Subgroup analyses of 14596 subjects (10016 Women, 4580 men) aged 4059 years were conducted in this study. Self-administered questionnaires including sleeping hours and current smoking habits were used. Subjects height and weight were measured with shoes being taken o. Sleep duration was divided into the following subgroups: <6, 6 6.99, 77.99, 88.99 and P9 h. Data were analyzed by SPSS for Windows (version 14.0J). One-way ANOVA was conducted to investigate dierences in BMI among the ve sleep duration groups. Logistic regression analyses using sleep duration as the predictor variable were performed for the following three dichotomized criterion of obesity: (1) BMI P 30 versus BMI < 30, (2) BMI P 28 versus BMI < 28, (3) BMI P 25 versus BMI < 25. Gender, age, and current smoking habits were also used for the adjustment of the data. Mean BMI of subjects who sleep less than 6 h was signicantly higher than that of subjects who sleep 7 7.99 h (p < 0.01). The results from the logistic regression analysis showed that sleep durations under 6 h were positively related to women and men having BMI P 30. The prevalence of overweight and obesity in the Japanese population, judged by BMI P 25, is lower than that in US or European populations [5]. So we also changed the cut-o value of BMI for logistic regression analysis. When the cut-o value of BMI was changed to 28 or 25, there was no change of signicance. In conclusion, short sleep duration was related to high BMI. References
[1] Bjorvatn B, Sagen IM, Oyane N, Waage S, Fetveit A, Pallesen S, et al. The association between sleep duration, body mass index and metabolic measures in the Hordaland Health Study. J Sleep Res 2007;16:6676. [2] Kohatsu ND, Tsai R, Young T, Vangilder R, Burmeister LF, Stromquist AM, et al. Sleep duration and body mass index in a rural population. Arch Intern Med 2006;166:17015. [3] Singh M, Drake CL, Roehrs T, Hudgel DW, Roth T. The association between obesity and short sleep duration: a populationbased study. J Clin Sleep Med 2005;1:35763. [4] Kawada T. Body mass index is a good predictor of hypertension and hyperlipidemia in a rural Japanese population. Int J Obes Relat Metab Disord 2002;26:7259. [5] International Obesity Taskforce. Available from: http://www.iotf. org/database/index.asp.

Tomoyuki Kawada * Hirofumi Inagaki Shosuke Suzuki Department of Hygiene and Public Health, Nippon Medical School, 1-1-5 Sendagi, Bunkyo-Ku, Tokyo 113-8602, Japan E-mail address: kawada@nms.ac.jp Received 9 October 2007; accepted 31 October 2007 Available online 21 February 2008

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +81 3 3822 2131; fax: +81 3 5685 3065.

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