STUDY OBJECTIVES: The aim was to assess associations between sleep duration, sleep stages, and central obesity in women. DESIGN: Cross-sectional study. SETTING: City of Uppsala, Sweden. PARTICIPANTS: Population-based sample of 400 women (range 20-70 years). INTERVENTIONS: Full-night polysomnography and measurement of anthropometric variables. MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS: Sleep duration was inversely related to both waist circumference and sagittal abdominal diameter. Sleep duration remained inversely related to waist circumference (adj. beta = -1.22 cm/h; P = 0.016) and sagittal abdominal diameter (adj. beta = -0.46 cm/h; P = 0.001) after adjusting for potential confounders. Duration of slow wave sleep (SWS, adj. beta = -0.058 cm/min; P = 0.025) and REM sleep (adj. beta = -0.062 cm/min; P = 0.002) were both inversely related to waist circumference afteradjustments. Moreover,duration of REM sleep was inversely related to sagittal abdominal diameter (adj. beta = -0.021 cm/min; P