Sleep

Sleep duration and prostate cancer-specific mortality in the Southern Community Cohort Study.

Anukam D, Nianogo R, et al. • Cancer causes & control : CCC • 2026

Cohort PubMed 42905154 DOI 10.1007/s10552-026-02256-8
TL;DR

Men reporting ≥9 hours of weekend sleep had an elevated risk of prostate cancer-specific mortality compared with those sleeping 7-8 hours, while overall sleep duration and restless sleep were not associated with prostate cancer-specific mortality.

Key Findings

Results

Longer weekend sleep (≥9 hours) was suggestively associated with higher prostate cancer-specific mortality compared with 7-8 hours.

  • Hazard ratio (HR) = 1.44, 95% CI: 1.02-2.03 for ≥9 hours versus 7-8 hours of weekend sleep.
  • Cox proportional hazards models adjusted for important potential confounders.
  • The authors describe the association as 'suggestive' rather than definitive.
Results

Overall sleep duration and restless sleep were not associated with prostate cancer-specific mortality.

  • Sleep exposures were measured via a baseline questionnaire.
  • No significant associations were reported for overall sleep duration or restless sleep.
Results

In race-stratified analyses, longer sleep duration was suggestively associated with increased prostate cancer mortality in both Black and White men, but the associations were not statistically significant.

  • The authors note that estimates were imprecise due to small event numbers.
  • The analysis was conducted to investigate whether race/ethnicity influences the sleep–mortality association.
Methods

The study cohort was large and predominantly Black/African American, with a long follow-up but a limited number of prostate cancer deaths.

  • The Southern Community Cohort Study recruited participants from 12 Southeastern states between March 2002 and September 2009.
  • The cohort included 34,166 males.
  • Median follow-up was 15.9 years, during which 225 men died from prostate cancer.

What This Means

This study followed more than 34,000 men, most of them Black, living in the southeastern United States for a median of about 16 years. Researchers asked whether how long men slept, or whether they slept restlessly, was linked to dying from prostate cancer. During follow-up, 225 men died of prostate cancer. Overall sleep duration and restless sleep were not linked to prostate cancer death. However, men who reported sleeping 9 or more hours on weekends had about a 44% higher risk of dying from prostate cancer than men who slept 7-8 hours. A similar pattern appeared in both Black and White men when analyzed separately, but those results were not statistically significant because there were few deaths in each group. This research suggests that very long weekend sleep may be associated with higher prostate cancer mortality, but it does not show that sleep causes the difference. Sleep was reported only once at the start of the study, and the number of deaths was small, so the findings are imprecise. More research would be needed to confirm the link and understand whether long sleep reflects underlying health issues.

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Citation

Anukam D, Nianogo R, Arah O, Rao J, Fowke J, Hashibe M, et al.. (2026). Sleep duration and prostate cancer-specific mortality in the Southern Community Cohort Study.. Cancer causes & control : CCC. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10552-026-02256-8