Living to Dream—Reply

Abstract

In Reply We thank Bliwise and Trotti for their interest in our findings showing that lower amounts of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep were associated with increased rates of mortality in 2 distinct population-based studies.¹ Since this article¹ was published, we have tested our findings in a third cohort, the Sleep Heart Health Study, and observed consistent outcomes (hazard ratio, 1.13 [95% CI, 1.07-1.18]). The Sleep Heart Health Study includes 5550 participants (47.6% men; 84.6% white) of a mean (SD) age of 63.0 (11.2) years at baseline who were monitored for a median of 11.9 years. A meta-analysis of all 3 cohorts yielded an overall hazard ratio of 1.13 (95% CI, 1.10-1.17; overall effect P < .001) for all-cause mortality in more than 10 000 participants, making it an extraordinarily robust finding across a broad age range and diverse racial/ethnic groups.² Identify all potential conflicts of interest that might be relevant to your comment. Conflicts of interest comprise financial interests, activities, and relationships within the past 3 years including but not limited to employment, affiliation, grants or funding, consultancies, honoraria or payment, speaker's bureaus, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, royalties, donation of medical equipment, or patents planned, pending, or issued. Err on the side of full disclosure. If you have no conflicts of interest, check "No potential conflicts of interest" in the box below. The information will be posted with your response. Not all submitted comments are published. Please see our commenting policy for details.