Shorter sleep duration associated with reduced antibody response to vaccination
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Key takeaways
- Sleeping fewer than 6 hours per night around the time of influenza and hepatitis vaccination was linked to lower antibody responses.
- Strong associations were noted in men but not women, possibly due to variations in sex hormones.
People who slept less than 6 hours per night had lower antibody responses to hepatitis and influenza vaccinations compared with those who slept 7 to 9 hours, according to researchers.
Vaccinations are a “major tool for public health,” yet “simple behavioral interventions that might boost vaccine responses have yet to be identified,” Katherine Spiegel, PhD, of the French Institute of Health and Medical Research, and colleagues wrote in Current Biology.
Previous research has presented mixed results on the role of sleep duration and responses to influenza and hepatitis vaccinations.
“Several authors have called for a thorough examination of the hypothesis that obtaining healthy amounts of sleep at the time of vaccination might increase and extend the protective effect,” Spiegel and colleagues wrote.
The researchers performed a meta-analysis of four experimental studies and three prospective cohort studies to analyze the link between sleep and antibody responses in healthy adults after vaccination.
The association between self-reported sleep of less than 6 hours and vaccination response did not meet the researchers’ predetermined criteria for statistical significance. However, when only analyzing studies that objectively measured sleep, Spiegel and colleagues found a “robust adverse impact of short sleep on vaccine response” among adults aged 18 to 60 years (effect size [ES] = 0.79; 95% CI, 0.4-1.18).
When stratifying their analysis based on gender, the researchers reported that short sleep durations significantly impacted vaccine responses in men (ES = 0.75; 95% CI, 0.16-1.34) but not in women, a result “likely due to the wide variations in sex hormone levels according to phase of the menstrual cycle, use of hormonal contraception, menopausal status, and use of hormonal replacement in post-menopausal women.”
The current analysis did not examine associations between sleep and COVID-19 vaccine responses due to the timing of data collection. However, “if, similar to the influenza and hepatitis vaccines, the antibody response to COVID-19 vaccines is adversely affected by insufficient sleep, then insufficient sleep around the time of COVID-19 vaccination may reduce antibody titers in the same range as the waning of the response to the most commonly administered vaccine over 2 months,” Spiegel and colleagues wrote.
Although the researchers did not investigate behavioral interventions for improving vaccine effectiveness, they wrote that sleep durations of 6 hours or more “may enhance the humoral response to diverse strains of viruses.”
“Such recommendation of obtaining adequate sleep duration is realistic as at-home behavioral sleep extension has proven to be feasible, acceptable, and efficient in a variety of populations,” they wrote.
Moving forward, Spiegel and colleagues called for larger-scale studies to better:
- define the time period before and after vaccination where sleep durations could be most impactful; and
- establish the relationship that sex hormones play between sleep duration and vaccine response in women.
“Collecting information about sleep duration around the time of vaccination and about sex hormone levels in the millions of people who will receive vaccines and boosters against COVID-19 and other viruses is an unprecedented opportunity to study the role played by sleep duration in vaccine response,” they concluded.