Liudmila Yakubova

Head of the Department of General Medical Practice and Polyclinic Therapy

Grodno State Medical University, Grodno, Belarus

«Can a lack of sleep cause high blood pressure?»

The purpose of my report was to present research data on the relationship between sleep disorders and high blood pressure.

Globally - the duration of night sleep has decreased (WHO). J. Gangwisch et al. (2006), who showed that a sleep duration of less than 5 hours increases the risk of developing hypertension by 60%. ARIC study showed, that participants who complained of difficulty falling asleep or sleep incontinence had a higher risk of developing hypertension at the end of the 6-year follow-up period (RR=1.2; 95% CI 1.03–1.3). Chronic sleep disorders are accompanied by an increase in catecholamine levels and activation of the nerves of the sympathetic nervous system, contributing to an increase in BP. But, excessive sleep is also not harmless to the body, and hypertension is observed more often in those people whose sleep lasts more than 9 hours, compared with those who sleep 7–8 hours a day (the Sleep Heart Health Study). On the other hand, the frequency of hypertension in patients with insomnia ranges from 21.4 to 50.2%, while in patients without insomnia it ranges from 11.0 to 41.8%.

Thus, more research is needed to evaluate pathophysiological relationships between lack of sleep and hypertension for the answer the question: what comes first?