The WHO’s ‘NCD Best Buys’ list updated recently has overlooked the sleep disorders which may prevent nations to achieve the SDG target of cutting down premature mortality due to the NCDs by third by 2030, a team of health experts has flagged concern.
The list was recently updated including more disorders in response to the lack of progress to reduce NCDs, with not a single country on track to achieve the 2025 global targets set by the World Health Assembly in 2013, and the declaration by the UN General Assembly High-Level Meeting on NCDs in 2018.
However, while agreeing that with more strategic funding, this target can still be achieved even by low and middle income countries, Mark Thomaz Ugliara Barone from Intersectoral Forum to Fight NCDs in Brazil (ForumDCNTs), Brazil and his colleagues expressing their views in the latest edition of the BMJ, said that a key group of risk factors for NCDs ie sleep disorder has been overlooked.
“Sleep disorders such as sleep apnoea, insomnia, and short sleep duration have long been identified as risk factors for the development and exacerbation of NCDs and mental disorders, yet they are often ignored in discussions about achieving sustainable development goal.”
The other authors included Claudia Roberta de Castro Moreno, associate professor and head of the Department of Health, Lifecycles, and Society, Ana Carolina Micheletti Gomide Nogueira de Sá, adjunct professor of the Department of Maternal and Child Nursing and Public Health, Elton Junio Sady Prates, diabetes working group facilitator and Júlia Silveira, technical adviser from Brazil.
Specialists are aware of effects of sleep disorders, but many policy and decision makers, as well as healthcare professionals and the public, don’t recognise that they’re risk factors, said the authors as they cited various studies highlighting effects of sleep disorders.
A 2008 global survey estimated that the prevalence of sleeping problems was 56% in the United States, 31% in western Europe, and 23% in Japan while yet another study in 2012 found striking regional variation across Ghana, Tanzania, South Africa, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Kenya.
Specific sleep disorders such as sleep apnoea affect more than 936 million people worldwide; insomnia has been found to affect up to 30% of adults.
Despite this, it’s estimated that only around one third to one half of people with sleep disorders seek help, perhaps rooted in a lack of awareness about the importance of treating sleep problems.
Researchers found that people with chronic insomnia lasting more than eight years had a 21% higher risk of hypertension and 51% increased risk of type 2 diabetes.
Moderate to severe sleep apnoea is associated with a 63% greater risk of type 2 diabetes and 30% higher risk of hypertension.
One systematic review found that the risk of developing type 2 diabetes associated with sleep disorders was comparable to traditional risk factors.
Not only this, the experts said, short sleep duration impairs people’s quality of life and health. It increases people’s risk of type 2 diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular diseases, coronary heart diseases, obesity, and strokes.
Despite their negative consequences, sleep disorders are often underdiagnosed and undertreated, increasing their burden.