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The following is a summary of “Association of healthy sleep patterns with incident sepsis: a large population-based prospective cohort study,” published in the January 2025 issue of Critical Care by Zou et al. 

Researchers conducted a retrospective study to evaluate the association between sleep behaviors and the incidence of sepsis.  

They analyzed data from the UK Biobank (UKB) including 4,09,570 participants free of sepsis at baseline. A composite sleep score was created based on 5 sleep behaviors: sleep chronotype, sleep duration, insomnia, snoring, and daytime sleepiness. Cox proportional hazards regression was applied to assess the associations between healthy sleep scores and incident sepsis.  

The results showed that during a mean follow-up of 13.54 years, 13,357 (3.26%) cases of incident sepsis were recorded. Among the 4,09,570 participants with a mean age of 56.47 years, 184,124 (44.96%) were male. At baseline, 9,942 (2.43%) reported 0–1 healthy sleep behaviors, 46,270 (11.30%) reported 21,15,272 (28.14%) reported 3, 1,50,522 (36.75%) reported 4, and 87,564 (21.38%) reported all 5 behaviors. Each 1-point increase in the sleep score was linked to a 5% reduced risk of sepsis (hazard ratio (HR), 0.95; 95% CI, 0.93–0.97). Participants with a score of 5 had a multivariate-adjusted HR (95% CI) for sepsis of 0.76 (0.69–0.83) compared to those with a score of 0–1. The negative correlation was stronger in participants aged <60 years (P for interaction <0.001). However, no association was found between healthy sleep patterns and sepsis-related death or critical care admission.  

Investigators concluded that a healthy sleep pattern might have reduced the risk of sepsis, according to findings from this cohort study. 

Source: ccforum.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13054-025-05287-w