~sleep~

LONDON - People who get less than six hours sleep per night have an increased risk of dying prematurely, researchers said.

Those who slumbered for less than that amount of time were 12 per cent more likely to die early, though researchers also found a link between sleeping more than nine hours and premature death.



"If you sleep little, you can develop diabetes, obesity, hypertension and high cholesterol," Francesco Cappuccio, who led research on the subject at Britain's University of Warwick, told AFP.

The study, conducted with the Federico II University in Naples, Italy, aggregated decade-long studies from around the world involving more than 1.3 million people and found "unequivocal evidence of the direct link" between lack of sleep and premature death.



"We think that the relation between little sleep and illness is due to a series of hormonal and metabolical mechanisms," Cappuccio said.

The findings of the study were published in the Sleep journal.