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This seems intuitively incorrect especially if insomnia is linked "with illnesses such as dementia and depression". If they are controlling for these "confoundi

by vichu 8y ago

This seems intuitively incorrect especially if insomnia is linked "with illnesses such as dementia and depression". If they are controlling for these "confounding factors", it's highly possible that they're just eliminating the side effects of insomnia that result in an early death. It would be intuitive that someone that suffers from insomnia but suffers none of the major side effects probably wouldn't have a higher mortality rate. If they remove these controls, the results might look very different. If anyone can find the full text of the study, it'd be nice to look at. This also flies in the face of things like Fatal Familial Insomnia and Sporadic Fatal Insomnia where patients soon die after suffering though months and months of insomnia[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatal_insomnia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatal_insomnia

marmaduke 8y ago
The abstract doesn’t say anything really, only that a meta analysis of existing studies reject null hypotheses that insomnia is linked to death. This isn’t really that useful, and digging deeper requires looking into the details of the studies. When all those results are pooled together, it only takes one bad study to skew the meta analysis. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1087079218300741 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S108707921...
- AlexCoventry 8y ago
  I think the null hypothesis is that insomnia is uncorrelated with mortality, and the meta analysis failed to reject it.
ThePlantOfFire 8y ago
>This also flies in the face of things like Fatal Familial Insomnia and Sporadic Fatal Insomnia No it doesn't. Those are prion diseases that cause protein transcription errors in the brain. It is completely different from normal insomnia. Not a good example.
drpgq 8y ago
Ridiculously few people die of fatal familial insomnia
- tonto 8y ago
  That is because FFI is very rare not because it doesn't kill you
  - Dylan16807 8y ago
    Yes, and? When 0% of a group have the deadly variant, that variant is useless for establishing an overall link to early death.

by vichu 8y ago

marmaduke 8y ago

The abstract doesn’t say anything really, only that a meta analysis of existing studies reject null hypotheses that insomnia is linked to death. This isn’t really that useful, and digging deeper requires looking into the details of the studies. When all those results are pooled together, it only takes one bad study to skew the meta analysis. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1087079218300741 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S108707921...

AlexCoventry 8y ago
I think the null hypothesis is that insomnia is uncorrelated with mortality, and the meta analysis failed to reject it.

ThePlantOfFire 8y ago

>This also flies in the face of things like Fatal Familial Insomnia and Sporadic Fatal Insomnia No it doesn't. Those are prion diseases that cause protein transcription errors in the brain. It is completely different from normal insomnia. Not a good example.

drpgq 8y ago

Ridiculously few people die of fatal familial insomnia

tonto 8y ago
That is because FFI is very rare not because it doesn't kill you
- Dylan16807 8y ago
  Yes, and? When 0% of a group have the deadly variant, that variant is useless for establishing an overall link to early death.