The Associations Between Lung Function And Rapid Eyes Movement Sleep In Healthy Adults: A Population-Based Cohort Study In Southwest China

Abstract

Background: To explore and understand associations between lung function and sleep architectures in healthy adults. Methods: Seventy-two participants (mean age 55.9 years, 72.2% female) were recruited from the Southwest China cohort study conducted at the West China hospital. Forced expiratory volume in first second (FEV1) and the ratio of FEV1 to forced vital capacity (FEV1/FVC) were measured using a spirometer for all participants. Participants’ objective sleep architectures, including sleep duration, rapid eye movement (REM) time, light and deep sleep were monitored using a Doppler radar sensor. Linear regression was used to analyze the associations between lung function measures and sleep architecture.Results: Results for FEV1/FVC were found to be positively correlated with REM sleep time (β = 0.29, p = 0.013). There was no positive correlation with sleep duration (p = 0.44 ), light sleep (p = 0.83) or deep sleep (p = 0.60) in regression model, including the use of lung function as the only predictor. Results for FEV1 demonstrated a tendency of positive correlation with REM sleep (β = 0.22, p = 0.07 ) and deep sleep (β = 0.21, p = 0.073), but it was not associated with sleep duration (p = 0.53) or light sleep (p = 0.54). After adjusting for all confounders, the results of FEV1/FVC remained positively correlated with REM sleep time (β = 0.28, p = 0.028). Conclusion: Our findings further confirmed that lung function is closely related to sleep architectures in healthy population, particularly, the result for FEV1/FVC is positively correlated with REM sleep.