Researchers suggest modifying behaviors

Poor sleep, low physical activity (PA), and high sedentary behavior (SB) were found to be both independently and jointly linked with an increased risk of cataract, according to a recent cross-sectional analysis, published in BMC Medicine.

Specifically, poor sleep (HR, 1.14; 95% CI, 1.08–1.19), low PA (HR, 1.05; 95% CI, 1.02–1.07), and high SB (HR, 1.08; 95% CI, 1.06–1.11) equated with increased cataract risk.

What’s more, the combination of poor sleep, low PA, and high SB elevated this risk, with the highest odds in cross-sectional (OR, 1.73; 95% CI, 1.37–2.15) and prospective (HR, 1.37; 95% CI, 1.21–1.55) analyses.

Further, replacing 1 hour a day of SB time with an equal time spent in total PA and sleep was linked with a 1.7% and 2.7% decreased risk of cataract, respectively.

Logistic regression and Cox proportional hazards models were employed to examine the independent and synergistic associations between sleep, PA, SB, and cataract, according to the study.

The cross-sectional analyses were made up of 440,645 participants from the UK Biobank. For the longitudinal analyses, a subset of 426,540 participants (53.9% female; mean [SD] age, 56.3 [8.1] years) sans cataract at baseline were included and followed for 10.8 years. During this time, 55,658 incident cataract cases were recorded. Baseline data on sleep, PA, and SB were collected via touchscreen questionnaires.

Cataract cases were identified through hospital inpatient records and self-reported data

The study’s researchers say that modifying these 3 behaviors, either individually or in combination, can effectively mitigate the risk of cataract.

See the full study here: https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-025-04312-7.