Could Lack of Sleep Increase the Risk of Catching a Cold?

Individuals who only get 6 hours of sleep a night or less are 4 times more likely to catch a cold after exposure to rhinovirus, according to a recent study.

While previous research has suggested that poor sleep is associated with susceptibility to infectious illness, most studies have relied on subjective measurements of sleep.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

RELATED CONTENT
Vitamin D Will Not Prevent Colds in Healthy Adults
Treatment of Acute and Subacute Cough: What Works, What Doesn't
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

In order to assess this relationship more accurately, researchers used wrist actigraphy and sleep diaries to assess the sleep duration and continuity of 164 participants over 7 consecutive days. Next, participants were quarantined and administered nasal drops containing rhinovirus 39, then monitored for 5 more days.

Overall, researchers found that those participants who slept for less than 6 hours a night were 4.2 times more likely to catch a cold than those who slept for 7 hours or more. Those who slept less than 5 hours, on average, were 4.5% more likely to catch a cold.

"Short sleep was more important than any other factor in predicting subjects' likelihood of catching cold," they concluded.

"It didn't matter how old people were, their stress levels, their race, education or income. It didn't matter if they were a smoker. With all those things taken into account, statistically sleep still carried the day."

—Michael Potts

Reference:

Prather AA, Janicki-Deverts D, Hall MH, Cohen S. Behaviorally assessed sleep and susceptibility to the common cold. SLEEP 2015;38(9):1353–1359.