Study On Sleep Quality And Quality Of Life Among Rural Elderly In Anhui Province

ObjectivesThe purposes of this article were to figure out the distributions and correlation between sleep quality and the quality of life, and further to explore the risk factors of abnormal sleep among the elderly in the rural areas of Anhui province. We aim to provid evidences for future measures which focus on improving sleep quality and quality of life among rural elderly.MethodsElderly who aged 60 years or more were selected from rural areas in the province of Anhui. Sleep quality and quality of life of the subjects were assessed independently, using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQl) scale and SF-36 scale. Bivariate Correlate, Univariate and Multivariate Logistic Regression were used to explore the correlation between sleep quality and the quality of life and to analyze the influencing factors of abnormal sleep.ResultsAmong 1680 rural elderly, the average going to bed time, getting up time, sleep duration were 20.50±1.10, 5.35±1.32, 6.41±2.03, and the average score of PSQI was 7.43±4.31. People whose sleep conditions were graded as well, common and poor were accounted for 29.4%, 24.3%, 46.3%, respectively. The prevalence of sleep latency problem was highest among all the seven dimensions of PSQI, the following were habitual sleep efficiency, sleep duration, daytime dysfunction, sleep disturbance, subjective sleep quality, used sleep medication. The physical functioning domain, role physical domain, bodily pain domain, general health domain, vitality domain, social functioning domain, role emotional domain, mental health domain, physical component summary domain, mental component summary scores of HRQOL were 76.99±26.73, 44.96±49.43, 55.16±49.33, 54.93±32.71, 66.55±17.53, 72.87±18.48, 65.13±19.51, 51.72±17.81, 57.15±22.52, 64.93±20.18, respectively. Sex, age, marital status, education, annual individual income, chronic diseases and sleep quality were different in terms of HRQOL among all the factors (P<0.05). There was a correlation between sleep quality and quality of life, and poor sleep quality had quality of life. Factors as being married/living alone/economically independent, having better social function, often eating meat or wheat were significant predictors for having good sleep conditions. However, factors as better education received, living alone, with poor vitality/general health, having chronic diseases (back pain, coronary heart or stomach disease), less meat intake, rice as major foods etc. were predictors for poorer sleeping condition.ConclusionOur data showed that it was unsatisfactory on sleep quality among the rural elderly in the province of Anhui. And people who were women, the higher ages, no marriage, lower educational and annual income levels, chronic diseases, poorer sleep quality had poorer quality of life. Besides, there was a correlation between the sleep quality and the quality of life. The sleep problems were influenced by several factors, so conditions on general, health and nutrition should be improved in order to prevent the poor sleep condition.