Insomnia
may be an important indicator of future hospitalization among middle-aged and
older adults, says a new study led by a team of researchers at the Johns Hopkins
Bloomberg School of Public Health.
They
examined the association between insomnia and use of home
healthcare services, nursing homes and hospitalization and found that insomnia
symptoms experienced by middle-aged and older adults were associated with
greater future use of costly health services. The results are featured online in
the Journal of Gerontology: Medical Sciences. "In a large
representative sample of US middle-aged and older adults, we found that
individuals with a greater number of insomnia symptoms were more likely to be
hospitalized, and to use home healthcare services," said Adam Spira, PhD, senior
author of the study and an assistant professor with the Bloomberg School's
Department of Mental Health. "Over 40 percent of our sample reported at least
one insomnia symptom, consistent with previous studies that showed insomnia to
be very common in this population. If the association between insomnia symptoms
and health service utilization is causal, our findings would suggest that the
prevention of insomnia could decrease health service use by 6-14 percent in this
population." According to the National Institutes of Health, insomnia is
the most common sleep complaint at any age and affects almost half of adults
ages 60 and older. Insomnia symptoms include difficulty falling asleep, staying
asleep, or both, and individuals with insomnia often report getting too little
sleep, having poor sleep quality and not feeling refreshed when they wake up.
Lead author, Christopher Kaufmann, MHS, and his colleagues examined the
association between insomnia symptoms and reports of health service utilization
using data from the Health and Retirement Study. Participants were asked how
often they experienced trouble falling asleep; trouble with waking up during the
night; trouble with waking up too early and not being able to fall asleep again,
and how often they felt rested when they woke up. Researchers evaluated health
care utilization in 2006 and respondents were asked questions about their use of
several health services two years later, including whether they were
hospitalized, used home health care services, or were placed in a nursing home.
Participants' demographic characteristics as well as current or previous medical
conditions were also recorded. "We found that there was a statistically
significant relationship between the report of insomnia symptoms and the future
use of costly health services. A relationship was even found between insomnia
symptoms and hospitalization as well as use of any of the three health services
after accounting for common medical conditions and elevated depressive
symptoms," said Kaufmann, a doctoral student with the Bloomberg School's
Department of Mental Health. "These results suggest that treating and carefully
monitoring insomnia symptoms in middle-aged and older adults might somewhat
reduce the use of health services and presumably the poor health outcomes that
necessitate these services." "Insomnia and health services utilization
in middle-aged and older adults: Results from the Health and Retirement Study,"
was written by Christopher N. Kaufmann, Sara L. Canham, Ramin Mojtabai, Amber M.
Gum, Natalie D. Dautovich, Robert Kohn and Adam P. Spira.
No comments:
Post a Comment