How sleep impacts vaccine efficacy

Hello my friends,

I was listening to an interview with a sleep scientist yesterday when I heard something that blew my mind: sleep quality can influence vaccine efficacy.  With flu season fast approaching and, perhaps even more germane, COVID vaccination on the horizon, sleep matters.

Many of you have chronic sleep disturbance by the nature of your work schedule. Personally, I never gave a second thought to sleep when I got my flu shots - it was usually a matter of convenience (during an early morning or night shift when the emergency department wasn’t too busy). Some years I got the flu and other years I didn’t. Surely some of that was overall vaccine efficacy, but now I have to wonder if some of it had to do with what was going on with my sleep. 

The literature on this is a mixed bag, but I think there is enough signal that we should pay attention - as in get your vaccination around a time of quality sleep. The data:

• Compared to good sleepers, college students with insomnia had a trend toward weaker antibody development after flu shots. 
• One month after getting hepatitis A vaccination, those allowed to sleep had double the antibody production compared to a group that stayed up all night. That was just a single night of sleep deprivation. 
• Sleep deprived men (but not women) had lower 5 day antibody response after flu vaccine. At 7 weeks there was no apparent effect of sleep deprivation.
• Shorter sleep duration predicted decreased antibody response to hepatitis B vaccination. 

Bottom line: We know sleep matters in myriad aspects of health. Adding to that, consider timing vaccinations for a time when you’ll have decent pre and post sleep.

What follows in this newsletter are some of our recent podcast episodes. If there are any topics you’d like to see covered on future shows, let us know. 

Until the next time, be well and keep on rocking.

Robbie O

References:

1. Taylor, Daniel J., et al. "Is insomnia a risk factor for decreased influenza vaccine response?." Behavioral sleep medicine 15.4 (2017): 270-287.
2. Lange, Tanja, et al. "Sleep enhances the human antibody response to hepatitis A vaccination." Psychosomatic medicine 65.5 (2003): 831-835.
3. Benedict, Christian, et al. "Acute sleep deprivation has no lasting effects on the human antibody titer response following a novel influenza A H1N1 virus vaccination." BMC immunology 13.1 (2012): 1-5.
4. Prather, Aric A., et al. "Sleep and antibody response to hepatitis B vaccination." Sleep 35.8 (2012): 1063-1069.

Coming Monday Sept 7: Esther Choo and the Equity Quotient: Dissecting the roots of gender and race inequality and strategies to transform the house of medicine. 

Why We Procrastinate: Procrastination isn't what you might think. Do you really not have the time to get that thing done, or is there something else getting in the way?

The Accumulation of Marginal Gains with Salim Rezaie: A conversation with Dr. Salim Rezaie on discipline vs stubbornness, working through depression, transforming his body from 260 lbs to super fit, the aggregation of marginal gains, and intentional living.

Stoic With a Capital S: Stoicism provides a way to find equanimity no matter the circumstance and take on whatever adversity is thrown at you.

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