Overall, people who had three insomnia symptoms - trouble falling or staying asleep, waking too early in the morning, and trouble staying focused during the day due to poor sleep - were 18% more likely to have events like a heart attack or stroke than people without any of these sleep issues, the researchers reported in Neurology.

"These results suggest that if we can target people who are having trouble sleeping with behavioral therapies, it's possible that we could reduce the number of cases of stroke, heart attack and other diseases later down the line," Dr Liming Li, senior author of the study and a researcher at Peking University in Beijing, said in a statement. About 11% of the people had difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep; 10% reported waking up too early; and 2% had trouble staying focused during the day due to poor sleep, the study found. The researchers didn't determine if the people met the full definition of insomnia. Compared with participants without specific insomnia symptoms, those who did have sleep problems were older, more likely to be female, not married, and from rural areas.

Copyright Reuters, 2019