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Background: About 83,000 COVID-19 patients were confirmed in China up to May 2020. Amid the well-documented threats to physical health, the effects of this public health crisis - and the varied efforts to contain its spread - have altered individuals' "normal" daily functioning. These impacts on social, psychological, and emotional well-being remain relatively unexplored - in particular, the ways in which Chinese men and women experience and respond to potential behavioral stressors. Our study investigated sex differences in psychological stress, emotional reactions, and behavioral responses to COVID-19 and related threats among Chinese residents.Methods: In late February (2020), an anonymous online questionnaire was disseminated via WeChat, a popular social media platform in China. The cross-sectional study utilized a non-probabilistic "snowball" or convenience sampling of residents from various provinces and regions of China. Basic demographic characteristics (e.g., age and gender) - along with residential living arrangements and conditions - were measured along with psychological stress and emotional responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.Results: Three thousand eighty-eight questionnaires were returned: 1749 females (56.6%) and 1339 males (43.4%). The mean stress level,as measured by a visual analog scale, was 3.4 (SD = 2.4) - but differed significantly by sex. Besides sex, factors positively associated with stress included: age (< 45 years), employment (unsteady income, unemployed), risk of infection (exposureto COVID-19, completed medical observation), difficulties encountered (diseases, work/study, financial, mental), and related behaviors (higher desire for COVID-19 knowledge, more time concerning on the COVID-19 outbreak). "Protective" factors included frequent contact with colleagues, calmness of mood comparing with the pre-pandemic, and psychological resilience. Males and females also differed significantly in adapting to current living/working, conditions, responding to run a fever, and needing psychological support services.Conclusions: The self-reported stress of Chinese residents related to the COVID-19 pandemic was significantly related to sex, age, employment, resilience and coping styles. Future responses to such public health threats may wish to provide sex- and/or age-appropriate supports for psychological health and emotional well-being to those at greatest risk of experiencing stress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: This prospective cohort study aimed to investigate the relationship between sleep duration and cancer incidence among 9996 participants over a median follow-up period of 9 years., Methods: Participants without cancer at baseline were followed for over 88,790 person-years. The incidence of cancer and sleep duration was self-reported. The relationship between sleep duration and cancer incidence was analyzed using Cox proportional hazards models adjusted for various confounding factors, including age, gender, lifestyle factors, and comorbidities., Results: During the follow-up, 325 participants were diagnosed with incident cancer, resulting in an incidence rate of 20.49 per 1000 person-years. After adjusting for confounders, a total sleep duration of less than 6 h was significantly associated with an increased risk of cancer (HR: 1.27; 95% CI: 1.01-1.61). This association was particularly strong for cancers in the digestive and respiratory systems (HR: 1.41; 95% CI: 1.03-1.93). Longer sleep durations (> 9 h) showed a potential increase in cancer risk, but results were not consistently significant. Age-stratified analyses revealed a similar significant increase in cancer incidence among individuals aged 60 years or younger with less than 6 h of sleep per day, showing a 35% increase in overall cancer risk and an 83% increase in digestive and respiratory system cancer. No significant association was found between nocturnal sleep durations or daytime naps and cancer incidence. However, a significant interaction was observed between daytime naps longer than 30 min and cancer incidence in women (p = 0.041)., Conclusions: We observed that short sleep duration may increase the risk of cancer, particularly cancers in the digestive and respiratory systems. Additionally, while longer sleep durations might also increase cancer risk, this finding requires validation with larger sample sizes., (© 2024. The Author(s).)