SAN ANTONIO – Compared with their cisgender counterparts, , results from a large national population-based survey showed.
Doug Brunk/MDedge News
Dr. Lisa B. Matlen
“That was a stronger association than we expected,” one of the study’s researchers, Lisa B. Matlen, MD, said during an interview at the annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies.
According to Dr. Matlen, a fellow in the division of sleep medicine at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, the transgender population is “extremely understudied” when it comes to research on sleep disturbances. In an effort to examine the prevalence of sleep disturbances and the association between transgender identity and sleep disturbances among transgender college students in the United States, she and her colleagues drew from the 2016 and 2017 American College Health Association National College Health Assessment II, a confidential, voluntary, electronically administered survey of college and university students. In all, 224,233 students were polled, and the researchers analyzed their responses to questions about gender identity, sleep symptoms, and diagnoses.
The mean age of the respondents was 23 years, and most (82%) were undergraduate students. Of the 224,233 students, 3,471 (1.6%) self-identified as transgender. More than half of the transgender population (61.9%) was white, 10.6% were Hispanic/Latino, 10.5% were Asian or Pacific Islander, 6.3% were biracial or multiracial, 4.6% were black, and the rest were from other ethnicities. Compared with cisgender students, transgender students had increased odds of sleep disturbances (odds ratio, 1.6), not feeling well rested on 4 or more days per week (OR, 1.8), going to bed early on 3 or more days per week due to sleepiness (OR, 1.3), and having insomnia 3 or more days per week (OR, 1.7). In addition, transgender students were nearly three times more likely to have an insomnia diagnosis and treatment, compared with their cisgender counterparts (OR, 2.9).
Dr. Matlen acknowledged certain limitations of the study, including the fact that it drew from a population-based sample and that the survey was based on self-reported information. The study’s first author was Ronald R. Gavidia Romero, MD. The researchers reported having no financial disclosures.