Study: Shorter Sleep Duration Suppresses the Immune System

A recent study using pairs of monozygotic twins found that shorter sleep duration was associated with a depressed immune system.

The study included 11 healthy monozygotic twin pairs, 82% of whom were female, in order to control for genetic and environmental factors that influence human sleep duration.
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Participants wore a wrist actigraphy for 2 weeks, and peripheral blood leukocyte (PBL) RNA from fasting blood samples were taken on the last day of actigraphic measurement.

Researchers used Gene Ontology to determine differential gene expression between twins and to map functional categories, and a comprehensive gene set enrichment analysis was performed using the entire PBL transcriptome. 

Overall, the mean 24-hour sleep duration of the total sample was 439.2 minutes, and the mean sleep duration difference per 24 hours within twins was 64.4 minutes.

According to the researchers’ findings, chronic sleep deprivation was associated with an up-regulation of genes involved in transcription, ribosome, translation, and oxidative phosphorylation.

“By accounting for familial confounding and measuring real life sleep duration, our study shows the transcriptomic effects of habitual short sleep on dysregulated immune response and provides a potential link between sleep deprivation and adverse metabolic, cardiovascular and inflammatory outcomes,” the researchers concluded.

—Melissa Weiss

Reference:

Watson NF, Buchwald D, Delrow JJ, et al. Transcriptional signatures of sleep duration discordance in monozygotic twin [published online January 25, 2017]. Sleep. doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/sleep/zsw019.