Short Duration of Sleep and Unintentional Injuries among Adolescents in China

Using a population-based cross-sectional health survey, the authors investigated the association between nightly duration of sleep and unintentional injuries among high school students in Nanning, China. The survey utilized a two-stage random cluster-sampling design. In March 2005, adolescents aged 13-17 years were recruited from students attending the first 3 years of high school in Nanning. Sleep duration was measured by self-reported usual times of going to bed and rising during a normal school week. Unintentional injury was assessed via a structured personal interview. Data were analyzed using multinomial logistic regression with adjustment for the effects of cluster sampling. After adjustment for potentially confounding factors, adolescents who slept less than 7 hours per night during a normal school week were approximately two times more likely to have experienced multiple episodes of unintentional injury during the 3-month pre-survey period (odds ratio = 2.2, 95% confidence interval: 1.1, 4.8) than those who slept 7 hours or more (p < 0.05). There was also a nonsignificantly (p > 0.05) increased risk of single injury for adolescents with short sleep durations (odds ratio = 1.5, 95% confidence interval: 0.9, 2.3). Findings suggest that a short nightly duration of sleep can be considered a potential risk factor for multiple unintentional injuries among adolescents.