Commentary
Previous cross-sectional studies revealed that short sleep duration has a close relationship with the presence of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). This historical cohort study of 12,306 participants is the first study showing that short sleep duration was a risk factor for incident NAFLD.
During the 7-year follow-up, 2,280 participants developed NAFLD. In Cox proportional hazards models, sleep duration of ≤5 h in both men and women were revealed to be a significant risk for incident NAFLD, compared to men and women with a sleep duration of >7 h (men: hazard ratio 1.39, 95% confidence interval 1.13-1.72, p=0.002; women; 1.46, 1.05-2.04, p=0.023).
