Social Jetlag and Cardiometabolic Risk in Preadolescent Children

Abstract

Objective: Childhood cardiometabolic disease risk (CMD) has been associated with short sleep duration. Its relationship with other aspects of sleep should also be considered, including social jetlag (SJL) which represents the difference between a person's social rhythms and circadian clock. This study investigated whether childhood CMD risk is associated with sleep duration, sleep disturbances, and SJL.Study Design: The observational study included 332 children aged 8–10 years (48.5% female). The three independent variables were sleep duration, sleep disturbances, and SJL. SJL was calculated as the variation in hours between the midpoint of sleep during free (weekend) days and work/school days. Eleven cardiometabolic biomarkers were measured, including central blood pressure, lipids, glycated hemoglobin, arterial wave reflection, and glucose. Underlying CMD risk factors were identified using factor analysis.Results: Four underlying CMD risk factors were identified using factor analysis: blood pressure, cholesterol, vascular health, and carbohydrate metabolism. Neither sleep disturbances nor sleep duration were significantly associated with any of the four CMD factors following adjustments to potential confounders. However, SJL was significantly linked to vascular health (p = 0.027) and cholesterol (p = 0.025).Conclusion: These findings suggest that SJL may be a significant and measurable public health target for offsetting negative CMD trajectories in children. Further studies are required to determine biological plausibility.

Social jetlag is associated with adverse cardiometabolic latent traits in early adolescence: an observational study

“…In other words, our statistical approach was more sensitive to this effect and picked up this association in girls either because they are more prone to this relation as hypothesized ( 8 , 18 , 41 , 43 – 45 ) or because our sample had more girls. This corroborates findings that components of cardiometabolic risk and adverse endocrine profiles other than adiposity are associated to SJL in pediatric populations ( 27 ) and other sleep disturbances (e.g., short sleep duration and bad quality sleep ( 31 – 34 ). The reason for this higher sensitivity of a latent factor is due to the fact that a cardiometabolic latent factor represents the shared variance of different continuous parameters that express an underlying theoretical cardiometabolic construct and partials out the specific effects of individual indicators ( 46 ).…”

“…The reason for this higher sensitivity of a latent factor is due to the fact that a cardiometabolic latent factor represents the shared variance of different continuous parameters that express an underlying theoretical cardiometabolic construct and partials out the specific effects of individual indicators ( 46 ). This makes this analytic approach advantageous to assess its association with SJL compared to: 1) averaging across ( 21 , 35 ) or combining various indicators in multivariate analyses ( 27 ); 2) using a metabolic syndrome index ( 28 , 30 , 31 , 34 ), for which there is no consensus in terms of which indicators should be used ( 49 ), their cutoff scores or for which adjustments (e.g., for age, sex and pubertal status) should be made ( 51 – 54 ); and 3) using multiple analyses, one for each cardiometabolic-related variables, which still seems to be the norm in the sleep literature. In point of fact, our post hoc exploratory correlations of SJL with each cardiometabolic indicator did not survive corrections for multiple comparison in either sex.…”

“…Although it seems clear that there is a positive association between SJL and adiposity irrespective of peoples’ age, SJL is also related to components of cardiometabolic risk and adverse endocrine profiles other than adiposity in pediatric ( 27 ) and adult populations ( 14 , 28 – 30 ). However, this association is less clear in adolescence, although in a variety of other sleep disturbances (e.g., short sleep duration and bad quality sleep) there appear to be a number of factors, other than high adiposity, that can increase the odds of presenting worse cardiometabolic profiles in adolescents, such as higher diastolic ( 31 ) or systolic blood pressure ( 32 ), hypercortisolemia ( 33 ), lower HDL cholesterol ( 34 ), elevated fasting glucose and higher triglyceride concentrations ( 34 ).…”

Population-representative study reveals cardiovascular and metabolic disease biomarkers associated with misaligned sleep schedules

“…Our previous publication on a different dataset of adult participants from two Czech townships revealed that HDL is significantly lower in both extreme early and late age- and sex-normalized MSF sasc chronotypes [ 40 ], a result that we have now confirmed using this independent, larger, and more representative dataset ( Figure 2F , Kruskal–Wallis, p < 0.0001). Moreover, AIP, a cardiovascular disease risk predictor [ 47 ], was significantly increased in both extreme MSF sasc chronotypes ( Figure 2G , Kruskal–Wallis, p = 0.0001). To explore further, we calculated mixed effects models where instead of chronotype we included the spread from the median of chronotypes (median absolute deviation, MAD_MSF sasc , see methods) as the explanatory variable.…”

“…Since BMI is in our dataset positively associated both with total cholesterol ( Table 1 ) as well as with social jetlag, and obesity, in general, is a factor previously reported to be linked with higher social jetlag [ 25 , 26 ], it is not surprising to find higher cholesterol levels in participants with higher social jetlag. Indeed, several studies have reported association of social jetlag with cholesterol in different cohorts including preadolescent children [ 47 ], midlife adults [ 31 ], and patients with hypertension or diabetes [ 37 , 48 ]. In contrast, a similarly sized study on an older (>50 y) population [ 28 ] did not detect any significant association between social jetlag and cholesterol or triglycerides, but reported association of social jetlag with higher glucose levels.…”