Study author Dr. Susan Redline, director of the University Hospitals Sleep Center at Case Western Reserve University here, said sleep duration of 6.5 hours or less was also associated with increased rates of prehypertension.
Prehypertension is a condition where a person's blood pressure is elevated above normal but not to the level considered to be hypertension (high blood pressure). Prehypertension is considered to be blood pressure readings with a systolic pressure from 120 to 139 mm or a diastolic pressure from 80 to 89 mm. Readings greater than or equal to 140/90 mm are considered hypertension.
Researchers studied 238 boys and girls ages 13 to 16, asking about their sleep habits. They found that 11 percent of them slept less than 6.5 hours a night, and 26 percent had poor or disturbed sleep with frequent awakenings at night.
One of every seven teens in the study had either hypertension while teens with less than 85 percent sleep efficiency had nearly three times the odds of high blood pressure, the researchers reported.
The study was published in the Aug. 19 issue of the journal Circulation.
