Short sleep duration increases the risk of hyperuricemia among Chinese adults: findings from the China Health and Nutrition Survey

Hyperuricemia is a growing public health problem with its increasing prevalence. Few studies have investigated the association between sleep duration and hyperuricemia. The objective of this study is to explore whether short sleep duration is an independent risk factor of hyperuricemia in Chinese adults. The data we analyzed was extracted from the 2009 wave of the China Health and Nutrition Survey. The population we analyzed included 8289 participants aged 18 years or older with sleep of 5–10 h per 24 h. We categorized the population into three groups by sleep duration: 5–6 h (short sleeper),7–8 h (regular sleeper), and 9–10 h (long sleeper). Hyperuricemia was defined as serum uric acid ≥7 mg/dL in men and ≥6 mg/dL in women. Among the three groups, 9.8% were short sleepers, 68.4% were regular sleepers and 21.8% were long sleepers. The prevalences of hyperuricemia were 19.5%,15.2% and 15.5% respectively. The risks of hyperuricemia in regular and long sleep groups were lower than short sleep group, and the association remained after adjusting for indexes including age, gender, chronic kidney disease, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, high low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-c), and obesity. In subgroup analysis, we found the association was still observed in participants without hypertension, diabetes mellitus or obesity. Our findings suggest that short sleep duration is associated with higher risk of hyperuricemia independently of cardiometabolic risk factors, especially in individuals without traditional hyperuricemia risk factors.