Associations between Sleep Duration and Overweight/Obesity: Results from 66,817 Chinese Adolescents

The findings about the shapes of associations between sleep duration and overweight/obesity in adolescents were largely inconsistent in the existing literature. We examined the functional forms of the associations between sleep duration and overweight/obesity in 66,817 Chinese adolescents by modelling sleep duration categorically and continuously. The adjusted ORs (95% CI) of overweight (with 7.0–8.9 h of sleep being considered the reference group) for subjects reporting <5.0 hours, 5.0–6.9 hours and ≥9.0 hours of sleep were 1.26 (1.05–1.51), 1.06 (1.00–1.11) and 1.27 (1.14–1.42), respectively. The adjusted ORs (95% CI) of obesity (with 7.0–8.9 h of daily sleep being considered as the reference group) for adolescents reporting <5.0 hours, 5.0–6.9 hours and ≥9.0 hours of sleep were 1.24 (0.97–1.57), 0.94 (0.87–1.01) and 1.42 (1.24–1.63), respectively. Continuous splines regressions support non-linear U shape associations between sleep duration and overweight/obesity, with the bottom at around 7.0–8.0 hours sleep (overweight: likelihood ratio = 32.7 p < 0.01; obesity: likelihood ratio = 40.4 p < 0.01). U-shape associations were found between sleep duration and overweight/obesity in Chinese adolescents and an optimal sleep duration of 7.0–8.0 hours sleep may prevent overweight/obesity.