Health & Fitness - Many with breast cancer don't sleep well

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Many with breast cancer don't sleep well

BALTIMORE (UPI) -- Poor sleep is a problem in long-term breast cancer survivors, which can hurt overall quality of life, Indiana University researchers said.

Study author Julie L. Elam of Indiana University studied 246 breast cancer survivors with an average age of 48 years with an average of 5.62 years post-treatment. Seventy-six percent of the participants were Caucasian, 73 percent employed, 73 percent married or partnered, 70 percent postmenopausal, 58 percent with a college education and 43 percent with at least one concurrent medical problem. The women completed the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, a self-rated questionnaire that assesses sleep quality and disturbances over a one-month interval.

The study found 65 percent of breast cancer survivors scored at or above the cut-off for poor sleep. Breast cancer survivors with hot flashes, with high physical functioning and high depressive symptoms were more likely to have poor scores on the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index.

The findings, presented at the 22nd annual meeting of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, indicated that sleep disturbances were problematic in long-term survivors with physiological and psychological predictors of poor sleep.

Copyright 2008 by United Press International

This news arrived on: 06/10/2008

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