Abstracts

Rationale: In people with epilepsy, sleep deprivation not only triggers seizures but also increases the risk for sudden unexpected death. This study assessed short sleep duration and related sleep medication use among people with epilepsy in a large nationally-representative sample of the U.S. adult population.

Methods: From aggregated cross-sectional National Health Interview Surveys for 2010, 2013, 2015 and 2017, we compared age-standardized prevalence of short sleep duration (< 7 hours per 24-hour period) or sleep medication use (≥ 1 times in past week) between respondents aged ≥18 years with a history of physician-diagnosed epilepsy (any epilepsy) (N=2,263) and without such a history (without epilepsy) (N=119,785). We conducted Z-tests to assess statistical significance at the level of 0.05. We also calculated adjusted prevalence ratios (APRs) of short sleep duration or sleep medication use, overall and by subgroups adjusted for sociodemographic and other risk factors, using multivariable logistic regression analyses. For short sleep duration, APRs were calculated among the entire sample adjusting for medication use (model 1) and separately for those who did not use sleep medications (model 2) and those who did (model 3). We considered APRs whose 95% confidence intervals (CIs) did not overlap 1.00 as statistically significantly different.

Results: The age-standardized prevalence of short sleep duration among respondents with epilepsy (36.1%) significantly exceeded that among those without epilepsy (31.0%). The age-standardized prevalence of sleep medication use among those with epilepsy (26.9%) significantly exceeded that among those without epilepsy (12.9%; APR:1.53, CI:1.37-1.70). This excess remained significantly different in nearly all subgroups. In adjusted analyses, epilepsy status was associated with short sleep duration among those who did not use sleep medications (APR:1.13%, CI: 1.02-1.25) (model-2) but not among those who did use medications (model-3) or when adjusting for sleep medication use (model-1). This significant association of epilepsy status with short sleep duration among those who did not use sleep medications remained among particular demographic groups.

Conclusions: Adults with epilepsy who do not use sleep medications more likely reported short sleep duration than those without epilepsy, overall and in some subgroups. No differences in short sleep duration by epilepsy status were observed among those using sleep medications. Identifying and preventing other risk factors for short sleep duration in these subgroups may improve short sleep duration.

Funding: Please list any funding that was received in support of this abstract.: No funding that was received in support of this abstract.