Reduced sleep duration increases the risk of lower urinary tract symptoms suggestive of benign prostatic hyperplasia in middle-aged and elderly males: a national cross-sectional study.

Background: The prevalence of lower urinary tract symptoms suggestive of benign prostatic hyperplasia (LUTS/BPH) remains high in men. However, whether reduced sleep duration enhances the risk of LUTS/BPH remains unknown.

Materials and methods: The 2015 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study was used in this study. Binary logistic regression was adopted to test the relationship between sleep duration and LUTS/BPH. Restricted cubic spline (RCS) regression was used to examine the non-linear association. In sensitivity analyses, propensity scores matching was performed to verify the robustness of the results.

Results: In this study, 8,920 males aged 40 years above were enrolled. In the fully adjusted logistic model, across the quartiles of sleep duration, the odds ratios of LUTS/BPH were 1.00 (reference), 0.94 (95% CI 0.77-1.15), 0.74 (95% CI 0.58-0.94), 0.54 (0.37-0.75), respectively. The results of RCS indicated a non-linear inverted U-shaped association between sleep duration and LUTS/BPH (p for non-linearity <0.05). In the subgroup analyses, no significant effects of settlements, alcohol and cigarette consumption, depression, and hypertension on the association between sleep duration and prevalent LUTS/BPH were observed (p for interaction >0.05).

Conclusion: Reduced sleep duration is significantly associated with the increases of the LUTS/BPH risk in Chinese middle-aged and elderly males.