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MINI REVIEW article
Front. Sleep
Sec. Sleep and Circadian Rhythms
Volume 4 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frsle.2025.1500218
This article is part of the Research Topic Psychocardiology in Socially Disadvantaged Groups View all 4 articles
Social disadvantage, insufficient sleep and cardiovascular disease.
Provisionally accepted- School of Health & Biomedical Sciences College of Science, Engineering & Health, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia
The aim of this paper was to search the literature examining the relationships between social disadvantage, insufficient sleep and cardiovascular disease and conduct a brief narrative review. A sleep disparity exists in the population with poor sleep quality strongly associated with poverty. Factors such as ethnicity, annual income, education, employment and health status significantly mediate the effect in poorer disadvantaged people. In turn, the findings from large epidemiological studies show that insufficient sleep and/or insomnia, and/or short duration sleep are linked to increased risk of cardiovascular diseases such as hypertension, coronary heart disease, heart failure , stroke , arrhythmia and cardiovascular mortality. In addition, insomnia together with objectively assessed short sleep duration confers a higher risk of developing cardiovascular diseases. However, more large epidemiological studies controlling for obstructive sleep apnoea are needed to fully confirm these findings.
Keywords: insufficient sleep, social disadvantage, cardiovascular disease, insomnia, Hypertension, Stroke
Received: 23 Sep 2024; Accepted: 28 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Kennedy. 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:
Gerard Anthony Kennedy, School of Health & Biomedical Sciences College of Science, Engineering & Health, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia
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