New Delhi: Weeklong irregular sleep can increase the risk of type 2 diabetes in middle-aged and older people by 34 per cent, a new study has found.

Even as researchers acknowledged assessing sleep duration over seven days may not capture long-term sleep patterns, they said changing this lifestyle factor can help lower the risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

According to the study published in the journal Diabetes Care, the link was “more pronounced” among those sleeping for longer durations and having a lower genetic risk of diabetes.

“Our findings underscore the importance of consistent sleep patterns as a strategy to reduce type 2 diabetes,” Sina Kianersi, a research fellow at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in the US and lead author of the study, said.

The researchers followed more than 84,000 participants from the UK Biobank dataset who were aged 62 years on average and did not have diabetes to begin with. Over seven years, they monitored the development of the metabolic disease through medical records.

The authors wanted to find out if irregular sleep lengths could promote diabetes by disrupting the body’s biological clock. They also wanted to examine the effects of irregular sleep in people with a low genetic risk of the disease.

The team found that the individuals with a sleep duration changing by more than 60 minutes had a 34 per cent higher diabetes risk, compared to those whose sleep lengths changed by less than 60 minutes.

However, after adjusting for lifestyle, health conditions, environmental factors and body fat, the risk among these individuals was found to drop to 11 per cent.

The researchers said they were interested in exploring the biological reasons why sleep irregularity increases the risk of diabetes. They also plan to study participants from younger age groups and with diverse racial backgrounds.

“More research is needed to fully understand the mechanism and confirm the results in other populations,” said Kianersi.