It has long been known that sleep and immune system responses are closely linked, but a recent study, published in the August edition of the journal SLEEP, and conducted by researchers at UCSF, has shown that vaccines are much less effective if the person who received the vaccine is not getting the recommended amount of sleep.

Aric Prather, PhD, a clinical health psychologist and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholar at UCSF and UC Berkeley commented: “With the emergence of our 24-hour lifestyle, longer working hours, and the rise in the use of technology, chronic sleep deprivation has become a way of life for many Americans.”

Research has shown that lack of sleep can lead to the following:

  • fatigue
  • muscle aches
  • headaches
  • depression
  • cold sensitivity
  • confusion/memory loss
  • red eyes
  • clumsiness
  • weight gain
  • periorbital puffiness (bags under eyes)
  • temper tantrums in kids
  • shaky hands

Sleep deprivation can also lead to an increased risk of:

This study, conducted at the University of Pennsylvania, which took place when Prather was a doctoral student at the University of Pittsburgh, was the first of its kind outside of the walls of a sleep lab.

Prather continued: “These findings should help raise awareness in the public heath community about the clear connection between sleep and health.”

Earlier research has proven that not getting enough sleep can result in illness – for example, upper respiratory infections. The researchers set out to determine whether good sleep habits would protect against immunity to vaccines. In particular, the they focused on healthy adults’ antibody response to the hepatitis B vaccine.

The authors recruited 120 non-smoking adults between age 40 and 60; 55 were male and 70 were female, all of the participants were from Pennsylvania.

The researchers gave each of the volunteers the normal hepatitis B vaccine – a 3 dose vaccine in which the first two doses are given a month apart and a booster is given at the 6 month mark.

The volunteers’ antibody levels were tested before they were given their second and third vaccines and again 6 months after the last vaccine injection. This would decide if they had a “clinically protective response.”

Meanwhile, every volunteer was asked to keep a record of their sleep habits, including when they went to bed, when they woke up, and how they would rank their quality of sleep. 88 of these volunteers were asked to wear monitors to bed, or actigraphs, which would help the researchers accurately monitor the sleeping patterns of some of the people involved in the study.

The results of the study found that people who did not sleep more than 6 hours a night were 11.5 times more likely to not be protected by the hepatitis B vaccine than people who were sleeping at least 7 hours a night.

Quality of sleep did not affect the outcome of the study at all, and 18 of the 125 volunteers did not end up with admissible vaccine protection.

The researchers added “Sleeping fewer than six hours conferred a significant risk of being unprotected as compared with sleeping more than seven hours per night”

Prather concluded:

“Based on our findings and existing laboratory evidence, sleep may belong on the list of behavioral risk factors that influence vaccination efficacy. While there is more work to be done in this area, in time physicians and other health care professionals who administer vaccines may want to consider asking their patients about their sleep patterns, since lack of sleep may significantly affect the potency of the vaccination.”

Written by Christine Kearney