Causal associations of short and long sleep durations with 12 cardiovascular diseases: linear and nonlinear Mendelian randomization analyses in UK Biobank

Aims Observational studies have suggested strong associations between sleep duration and many cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), but causal inferences have not been confirmed. We aimed to determine the causal associations between genetically predicted sleep duration and 12 CVDs using both linear and nonlinear Mendelian randomization (MR) designs. Methods and results Genetic variants associated with continuous, short (≤6 h) and long (≥9 h) sleep durations were used to examine the causal associations with 12 CVDs among 404 044 UK Biobank participants of White British ancestry. Linear MR analyses showed that genetically predicted sleep duration was negatively associated with arterial hypertension, atrial fibrillation, pulmonary embolism, and chronic ischaemic heart disease after correcting for multiple tests (P Conclusion This study suggests that genetically predicted short sleep duration is a potential causal risk factor of several CVDs, while genetically predicted long sleep duration is unlikely to be a causal risk factor for most CVDs.