Sleep Duration and Breast Cancer Phenotype

Emerging evidence suggests that short sleep is associated with an increased risk of cancer; however, little has been done to study the role of sleep on tumor characteristics. In this study, we evaluated the relationship between sleep duration and tumor phenotype in 972 breast cancer patients. Sleep duration was inversely associated with tumor grade (univariate P = 0.032), particularly in postmenopausal women (univariate P = 0.018). This association did not reach statistical significance after adjustments for age, race, body mass index, hormone replacement therapy use, alcohol consumption, smoking, and physical activity in the entire study sample ( P = 0.052), but it remained statistically significant ( P = 0.049) among post-menopausal patients. We did not observe a statistically significant association between sleep duration and stage at diagnosis, ER, or HER2 receptor status. These results present a modest association between short duration of sleep and higher grade breast cancer in post-menopausal women. Further work needs to be done to validate these findings.