Sleep Disorders in Patients with Inflammatory Bowel Diseases

Abstract

Objective: Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), including ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn’s disease (CD), have been associated with sleep disturbances as extra-intestinal manifestations. We aimed to evaluate sleep quality in a group of Middle Eastern IBD patients while assessing the links between disease characteristics, sleep disturbances, and related comorbidities. Materials and Methods: Outpatient IBD cases who attended our hospital clinic from 2019 to 2021 were recruited in this prospective study. The patients filled in verified translations of the insomnia severity index, Epworth sleepiness scale, Pittsburgh sleep quality index, Berlin questionnaire for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), and restless legs syndrome (RLS) questionnaire by means of online or phone surveys. The chi-squared test and Student’s t-test were used for binary and continuous variables, respectively. The Mann-Whitney U test was used for non-normally distributed data. Results: The sleep quality of 82 IBD patients (13 CD and 69 UC) was assessed. Low sleep quality was observed in 52 cases (63.4%), and UC patients with pancolitis were significantly more likely to have sleep disturbances compared to patients with partial colitis (p=0.015). Moreover, patients with elevated C-reactive protein (CRP) displayed significantly higher frequencies of OSA and RLS (p=0.038 and p=0.040, respectively). Conclusion: Sleep impairment was identified in more than half of our IBD patient pool. Therefore, we suggest screening for sleep disturbances (particularly in UC patients with pancolitis) and related comorbidities, such as OSA and RLS (especially in patients with elevated CRP levels), in IBD patients to enhance their quality of sleep.

Keywords

• sleep
• inflammatory bowel diseases
• ulcerative colitis
• crohn disease