ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Nutr.
Sec. Nutrition and Metabolism
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnut.2025.1593720
Associations of Self-Reported Sleep Disturbances, Sleep Onset, and Duration with Gallstone Disease Risk
Provisionally accepted
Dongjun Bao1*
Kunming Bao2*Xiaoxian Fu1Xueping Xie1Xin Ma1
Zhidong Huang3Rongcai Que1
Wenjun Gu4Shengyou Lu1- 1The Second Hospital of Longyan, Longyan, Fujian Province, China
- 2Longyan First Hospital Affiliated to Fujian Medical University, Longyan, China
- 3Guangdong Pharmaceutical University, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China
- 4Huizhou Third Peoole's Hospital, Huizhou, Guangdong Province, China
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The role of sleep disturbances in gallstone disease risk remains unclear.We aimed to examine the associations between sleep disturbances and gallstone disease risk.We analyzed data from 9,059 participants in the NHANES survey (2017)(2018)(2019)(2020). The primary outcome of this study was gallstone disease. Sleep disturbances included trouble sleeping, early or late sleep onset time, and long or short sleep duration.Multivariate logistic regression analysis was employed to evaluate the associations between sleep disturbances and gallstone disease risk.After adjusting for confounding factors, trouble sleeping was associated with an elevated risk of gallstone disease, with the odds ratio (OR) of 1.47 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.01-2.15), compared to those without trouble sleeping. In further stratified analysis, among individuals with trouble sleeping, no significant associations were found between different sleep onset intervals, sleep duration and gallstone disease risk. Among participants without trouble sleeping, the sleep onset interval of 23:00 to 00:00 was associated with a significantly increased gallstone disease risk compared to the reference sleep onset interval of 22:00-23:00, with an OR of 1.61 (95% CI: 1.06-2.45). Short sleep duration (<6 hours) was associated with a significantly reduced gallstone disease risk compared to the reference sleep duration of 6-8 hours, with the OR of 0.43 (95% CI: 0.25-0.75).This study demonstrates that trouble sleeping increases the risk of gallstone formation, independent of sleep onset time and sleep duration. Among those without trouble sleeping, a sleep onset time between 23:00-00:00 is associated with a higher risk, while short sleep duration (< 6 hours) appears protective.
Keywords: Trouble sleeping, Sleep onset time, sleep duration, Gallstone disease, NHANES
Received: 14 Mar 2025; Accepted: 11 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Bao, Bao, Fu, Xie, Ma, Huang, Que, Gu and Lu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Dongjun Bao, The Second Hospital of Longyan, Longyan, Fujian Province, China
Kunming Bao, Longyan First Hospital Affiliated to Fujian Medical University, Longyan, China
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