LAUSR

Growing evidence shows the important role of sleep on cardiovascular health in pregnant women with nearly 50% self-reporting poor sleep quality and 30% insufficient sleep. These sleep disturbances have been associated with adverse perinatal outcomes (e.g., hypertension, preterm births). Many studies have only used self-reported questionnaires during pregnancy. However, a few studies have utilized sleep labs and found that subjective and objective assessments of sleep varied from poor to low associations. The aim of this study was to examine the longitudinal relationship between objective sleep and cardiovascular parameters in pregnant women. Seventeen healthy pregnant women with 88% self-identifying as Hispanic were consented to participate in the longitudinal observation study. Their average age was 27.8 years (SD=4.48). A validated Oura ring was used to daily monitor objective sleep and cardiovascular parameters across the pregnancy, including resting heart rate (HR), heart rate variability (HRV) indicated by RMSSD (root mean square of successive differences) of interbeat intervals, deep, light, and Rapid EYE Movement (REM) sleep, awake time and sleep onset latency. Mixed effects models were conducted to analyze daily changing patterns of these parameters using R-4.2.0 for Mac. Over the pregnancy, when deep and light sleep increased by 1 hour, heart rate decreased by 5.55 bpm (p< 0.001) and 1.32 bpm (p = 0.01), respectively; when REM sleep increased by 1 hour, heart rate increased by 2.15 bpm (p =0.049). Conversely, when deep and light sleep increased by 1 hour, RMSSD increased by 10.32 ms (p< 0.001) and 2.93 ms (p< 0.02), respectively; when REM sleep increased by 1 hour, RMSSD decreased by 7.27 ms (p=0.001). There were no significant associations between HR/RMSSD and awake time/sleep onset latency. This study appears to be the first to investigate the longitudinal relationship between sleep and cardiovascular parameters among primarily Hispanic pregnant women in the U.S. in a non-lab setting. Our study provides preliminary evidence that longer deep/light sleep and shorter REM sleep may improve cardiovascular health among pregnant women. National Science Foundation grants including the Smart and Connected Communities (CNS: 1831918) and Collaborative Research: Integrative Heterogeneous Learning for Intensive Complex Longitudinal Data (DMS: 2210640).