A recent study found that vaccinations may have limited effects on the body of people who don’t get enough sleep. It also said that getting less than six hours of sleep the night before getting the flu or COVID vaccine makes it harder to protect against the virus or the microorganism that causes diseases.
In a formal statement, senior author Eve Van Cauter, a professor emeritus at the University of Chicago’s Department of Medicine, stated, “Good sleep not only amplifies but may also extend the duration of protection of the vaccine.”
However, the study also found that men’s immune responses to vaccines are affected by insufficient sleep, which has clinical relevance.
Dr. Michael Irwin, a distinguished professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the UCLA Geffen School of Medicine, who was a co-author of the study and was quoted by CNN as saying, “Research that used objective measures of sleep deprivation, such as that of a sleep lab, found a decrease in the ability to respond to the vaccine that was particularly and statistically significant in males, but not females.” This was the conclusion that was reached by the research.
Also read: Five things a study shows can help you sleep better and live longer. Experts say that women generally have stronger immune responses to vaccines because they have different hormonal, genetic, and environmental factors.
A meta-analysis of previous studies on sleep and immune function following vaccination against influenza A and hepatitis A and B was used in the new study, which was published on Monday in the journal Current Biology. When the study took measures such as requiring participants to visit a sleep lab, they discovered a “robust” association of less than optimal immunity following vaccination.
Watch also: Gravitas: Due to a lack of sufficient studies on sleep in Covid-vaccinated individuals, the study did not include an analysis of antibody response to Covid vaccines.
“Whether we are using an mRNA vaccine for Covid-19, an influenza, hepatitis, typhoid, or pneumococcal vaccine,” Irwin stated, “how we stimulate the immune system is the same.” “We believe we can generalize to Covid because it is a typical antibody or vaccine response,” Dr. Irwin stated.
