Your heart reveals your future health during sleep
Amman3 min read
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A recent scientific study has revealed that the heart's electrical signals during the early stages of sleep may carry early indicators of health risks that a person might face over the next ten years, thanks to artificial intelligence technologies.
The study, published in the scientific journal "Sleep" with support from the U.S. National Institutes of Health, showed that analyzing electrocardiogram (ECG) data during sleep can help predict the likelihood of developing heart rhythm disorders, stroke, and heart failure, in addition to the risk of death from any cause.
A study on tens of thousands
A team of researchers, in collaboration with scientists from Emory University, led a study that relied on training an artificial intelligence model using health data from approximately 16,000 patients, before testing it on two additional groups comprising nearly 23,000 patients from U.S. medical institutions.
The researchers used deep learning techniques to analyze ECG recordings collected during sleep studies, with the aim of discovering subtle patterns that may be linked to future health risks.
The results showed that the model was able to identify different levels of risk for cardiovascular disease, even after accounting for traditional risk factors such as age, sex, diabetes, high blood pressure, and smoking.
What diseases can be predicted?
The high risk score calculated by the AI model was associated with increased probabilities of developing a number of health problems; the results showed an increased risk of atrial fibrillation by 103 to 172 percent, heart failure by 69 to 133 percent, stroke by 19 to 40 percent, and death from any cause by 65 to 82 percent.
It should be noted that these percentages reflect the increase associated with the high risk score produced by the model, and not the increase in risk for all people in general.
In contrast, the results did not show a statistically significant association with an increased risk of heart attack, except in one of the participant groups.
Why do the early stages of sleep reveal the heart's secrets?
The researchers explained that the transition from wakefulness to sleep is accompanied by a rapid change in the activity of the autonomic nervous system, which is responsible for regulating automatic functions in the body, such as heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing.
These changes may help reveal subtle disturbances in the heart's rhythm or the way electrical signals travel within it, which are indicators that may be difficult to detect by traditional means.
The study pointed out that analyzing these signals with the help of artificial intelligence could enhance the accuracy of health risk assessment, especially when combining the results with known medical information and sleep stage data.
Improving early detection opportunities
The results showed that adding the risk scores produced by the model to traditional methods of assessing heart health contributed to improving the ability to predict atrial fibrillation by up to 6 percent, heart failure by up to 9 percent, and death by up to 7 percent.
The researchers believe that these results may pave the way for utilizing data already collected during sleep exams and transforming them into an additional tool that helps doctors identify people most at risk for cardiac issues years before symptoms appear.
However, this technology does not mean that sleep ECGs have become a substitute for standard medical examinations; rather, it represents a promising means to support medical assessment and early detection, pending further studies to determine how to use it practically in healthcare.
