Erratic sleep causes inflammatory disease

Sleep disturbances and longer sleep duration are associated with increases in markers of inflammation, finds a new study.

Insufficient sleep is considered a public health epidemic by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Together with diet and physical activity, sleep health represents a third component in the promotion of health-span,” said Michael Irwin from the University of California — Los Angeles, US.

Common sleep disturbances, such as insomnia, have been associated with increased risk of inflammatory disease and mortality.

“Sleep disturbance or in- somnia should be regarded as behavioural risk factors for inflammation, similar to the adverse effects of high fat diet or sedentary behaviour,” Irwin added.

Inflammation causes a number of substances to increase in volume in the blood stream, including C-reactive protein (CRP) and interleukin-6 (IL-6).

Increased levels of these substances predict adverse health conditions including cardiovascular events, hypertension and Type 2 diabetes, said the paper published in the journal Biological Psychiatry.

People with a normal sleep duration get 7- 8 hours of shut-eye per night.

The findings showed that sleep disturbance — poor sleep quality or complaints of insomnia, and long sleep duration which is more than 8 hours — were associated with increased levels of CRP and IL-6.

Shorter sleep duration was associated with increased levels of CRP.

“It is important to highlight both too much and too little sleep appears to be associated with inflammation, a process that contributes to depression as well as many medical illnesses,” noted John Krystal, editor of the journal Biological Psychiatry.

For the study, the team conducted a meta-analysis of 72 different articles for associations between sleep and inflammatory markers, which included over 50,000 participants from population-based and clinical studies. IANS