Empirical derivation of cutoff values for the sleep health metric and its relationship to cardiometabolic morbidity: results from the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study

Emerging evidence supports a multidimensional perspective of sleep in the context of health. The sleep health model, and composite sleep health score, are increasingly used in research. However, specific cutoff values that differentiate "good" from "poor" sleep, have not been empirically derived and its relationship to cardiometabolic health is less-well understood. We empirically derived cutoff values for sleep health dimensions and examined the relationship between sleep health and cardiometabolic morbidity. Participants from two independent Biomarker Studies in the MIDUS II (N = 432, 39.8% male, age = 56.92 ± 11.45) and MIDUS Refresher (N = 268, 43.7% male, age = 51.68 ± 12.70) cohorts completed a 1-week study where sleep was assessed with daily diaries and wrist actigraphy. Self-reported physician diagnoses, medication use, and blood values were used to calculate total cardiometabolic morbidity. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were generated in the MIDUS II cohort for each sleep health dimension to determine cutoff values. Using derived cutoff values, logistic regression was used to examine the relationship between sleep health scores and cardiometabolic morbidity in the MIDUS Refresher cohort, controlling for traditional risk factors. Empirically derived sleep health cutoff values aligned reasonably well to cutoff values previously published in the sleep health literature and remained robust across physical and mental health outcomes. Better sleep health was significantly associated with a lower odds of cardiometabolic morbidity (OR [95% CI] = 0.901 [0.814-0.997], p = .044). These results contribute to the ongoing development of the sleep health model and add to the emerging research supporting a multidimensional perspective of sleep and health.