Dhaka, Sept. 18 -- The type of sleep a person gets may matter as much as how long they sleep when it comes to disease risk, according to a large study of nearly 100,000 people.

Researchers at Peking University analysed health data from 95,559 participants in the UK Biobank, who wore wrist accelerometers for seven consecutive days and nights, reports The Independent.

They tracked participants for an average of nine years and examined links between sleep patterns and more than 1,000 disease outcomes.

The study looked at the duration of each sleep stage -- REM, deep sleep and light sleep -- as well as total sleep time, wakefulness after sleep onset and night-to-night irregularity.

More REM sleep was associated with a lower risk of 83 con...