Poor multidimensional sleep health was associated with higher cardiovascular disease and mortality risks, with exploratory proteomic analyses suggesting potential involvement of circulating proteins related to inflammation, immunity, chemotaxis, and metabolic dysregulation.
Higher seven-component sleep health score (SHS) was associated with lower risks of coronary heart disease, stroke, atrial fibrillation, heart failure, cardiovascular mortality, and overall mortality.
Data-driven sleep patterns identified by K-prototypes clustering showed that mixed sleep disturbance and non-restorative sleep patterns were associated with higher risks across multiple outcomes.
Proteomic analyses identified 188 plasma proteins related to the SHS, mainly enriched in inflammatory, immune, and chemotactic pathways.
Exploratory mediation analyses identified 34 proteins with potential mediation signals in the sleep–outcome associations, with HGF, IGF2R, and FABP4 showing recurrent cross-outcome signals.
The authors conclude that multidimensional sleep assessment supports population-level prevention and that the proteins provide candidate pathways for future mechanistic and interventional studies.
This study used data from over 257,000 people in the UK Biobank to look at overall sleep health, combining seven aspects of sleep into a single score, rather than looking at one sleep trait at a time. People with better sleep scores had lower risks of heart disease, stroke, atrial fibrillation, heart failure, death from cardiovascular causes, and death from any cause. The links were strongest for heart failure and coronary heart disease. Two sleep patterns, mixed sleep disturbance and non-restorative sleep, were tied to higher risks across several outcomes. In a subset of about 27,000 people with blood protein measurements, the researchers found 188 proteins linked to sleep health, many involved in inflammation, immune function and the movement of immune cells. A further exploratory analysis flagged 34 proteins that might help explain how poor sleep relates to disease, with HGF, IGF2R and FABP4 appearing repeatedly across outcomes. This research suggests that looking at sleep as a whole may be useful for understanding and possibly preventing cardiovascular disease. Because the study is observational and the protein analyses were exploratory, it cannot show that poor sleep causes these outcomes or that these proteins are the mechanism. The protein findings are best seen as leads for future studies.
Wei Z, Xiao Q, Wang S, Liu L, Meng D, Mao Z, et al.. (2026). Multidimensional sleep health: risk of cardiovascular disease and mortality, and mediation by plasma proteins.. Journal of global health. https://doi.org/10.7189/jogh.16.04349