Patterns in behavioural sleep variables and social jetlag in elderly people of Western Odisha

ABSTRACT

In humans, sleep is an essential physiological process for life and survival. The main objective of the current study is to determine the behavioural sleep patterns and social jetlag in elderly adults. The second objective is to define the relationship among subjective sleep quality, mid-sleep timings, social jetlag, and sunlight exposure. We recruited 945 female and 1047 male participants aged ≥ 60 years from 65 rural villages in the Sambalpur district of Odisha, India. The Munich Chrono Type Questionnaire (MCTQ) is a self-reported questionnaire that measures a person’s behavioral sleep variables, including social jetlag and chronotype, whereas the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) measures the subjective sleep quality of an individual. We employed MCTQ and PSQI to obtain behavioral sleep variables and subjective sleep quality in the recruited subjects. The behavioral sleep variables were compared using a paired t-test on both work and work-free days. In addition, the behavioral sleep variables as a function of gender were compared using an independent Student’s t-test. In the current study, most of the elderly individuals reported both midpoint of sleep on workdays (MSW) and midpoint of sleep on work-free days (MSF) between 00:01–03:00. The averages of mid-sleep timings between workdays and work-free days were not statistically significant. Data on MSFsc (midpoint of sleep on work-free days sleep corrected) indicated that most elderly adults (99.6%) are morning type; they go to bed early and wake up early. The elderly participants from the rural population of Sambalpur district in western Odisha had the least social jetlag and exhibited good subjective sleep quality. It would be worthwhile to find out the determinants of these positive features apropos social jetlag and behavioural sleep patterns.

KEYWORDS:

• Social jetlag
• elderly people
• chronotype
• sleep variables
• sunlight exposure

Acknowledgments

We are very grateful to the authorities of the Gangadhar Meher University, Sambalpur, Odisha, India for providing the required facilities, and logistics for carrying out the research included in this article. We are also indebted to two unknown reviewers for their valuable suggestions that improved this original article considerably.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Author contributions

R.B.K., P.K.A., and P. S. contributed to data collection and stratification. The analysis of the data and writing of the manuscript has been done by S.M., A.K.P., M.M., U.C.P., and R.S. The overall work has been supervised by M.M.

Data availability statement

Data are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Ethics approval

The study design and protocol were ethically approved by the Institutional Ethics Committee (IEC) for human research at Gangadhar Meher University, Amruta Vihar, Sambalpur, Odisha (IEC ref no. 9858). We explained the importance of the study to each subject before participating in the study.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

The authors acknowledge the Odisha Higher Education Programme for Excellence and Equity (OHEPEE), Govt. of Odisha, India for financial support and the University Administration for their support during the study.