| Title: | Association of the metabolic signature of sleep patterns with breast cancer risk: a prospective cohort study |
| Journal: | Frontiers in Endocrinology |
| Published: | 15 Oct 2026 |
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.3389/fendo.2026.1906256 |
Publication 21507
WARNING: the interactive features of this website use CSS3, which your browser does not support. To use the full features of this website, please update your browser.
Abstract
Existing evidence regarding the association between sleep patterns and breast cancer development remains inconsistent. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between sleep patterns and breast cancer risk while examining the potential mediating effects of sleep score-related metabolic signatures. A total of 220,089 participants from the UK Biobank study were analyzed. Cox proportional hazards models were used to examine the relationships among the sleep score (based on 5 sleep factors), genetic risk (based on 22 variants), metabolic signature (derived from 251 metabolites), and breast cancer incidence, adjusting for age, BMI, sociodemographic, and lifestyle factors. Mediation analysis was used to test whether the metabolic signature mediated the association between the sleep score and breast cancer risk. A total of 8459 incident breast cancer cases (3.84% of the cohort) were identified during a median follow-up of 11.6 years. Compared with individuals with a sleep score of 5 points, those with a score of 0-1 points had a significantly greater risk of developing breast cancer (HR = 1.30, 95% CI = 1.11-1.52). The sleep-related metabolic signature was also associated with elevated breast cancer risk (HR = 1.62, 95% CI = 1.32-1.99). Mediation analysis revealed that the metabolic signature accounted for 13.5% of the observed association between the sleep score and the incidence of breast cancer. Maintaining healthy sleep patterns may lower the risk of breast cancer irrespective of genetic predispositions. The metabolic signature partially mediated the association between the sleep score and breast cancer development.</p>
7 Authors
- Qimei Yang
- Fang Ai
- Yalan Zhao
- Zihan Wang
- Zhaohong Bi
- Rui Ma
- Dabao Xu
Enabling scientific discoveries that improve human health