A Consistent Lack of Sleep Negatively Impacts Immune Stem Cells, Increasing Risk of Inflammatory Disorders and Heart Disease - Neuroscience News

Summary: Sleep deprivation alters the structure of DNA inside immune cells and increases the number of immune cells, which causes them to overreact and spark inflammation.

Chronic, insufficient sleep can negatively affect immune cells, which may lead to inflammatory disorders and cardiovascular disease, according to a new study from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

The research, published September 21 in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, is the first to show that sleep alters the structure of DNA inside the immune stem cells that produce white blood cells—also known as immune cells—and this can have a long-lasting impact on inflammation and contribute to inflammatory diseases.

It shows that in humans and mice, disrupted sleep has a profound influence on the programming of immune cells and rate of their production, causing them to lose their protective effects and actually make infections worse—and these changes are long-lasting.

Then, the same group of adults reduced their sleep time by 90 minutes every night for six weeks, and had their blood and immune cells reanalyzed.

After six weeks of sleep restriction, they had an increased number of immune cells.

Groups of mice were either allowed to sleep undisturbed, or had sleep fragmentation, where they were awakened throughout the night for 16 weeks.

Then, mice with sleep fragmentation went through uninterrupted sleep recovery for ten weeks.

Investigators took immune stem cells and immune cells from mice during these undisturbed, fragmented, and sleep recovery phases, analyzed them and compared them at the end of the experiment.

They showed that all mice with fragmented sleep had significant changes to their immune stem cells, producing an increased number of immune cells, and also showed evidence of rewiring and reprogramming.

A notable finding from the mouse group was that even after sleep recovery, the immune stem cells retained this rewiring structure, and they continued to produce additional white blood cells, making the mice susceptible to inflammation and disease.

We can detect a molecular imprint of insufficient sleep in immune stem cells, even after weeks of recovery sleep.

“It was surprising to find that not all clusters of stem cells responded to insufficient sleep in the same way.