Acute sleep deprivation has no lasting effects on the human antibody titer response following a novel influenza A H1N1 virus vaccination

In comparison to the sleep group, sleep-deprived males but not females had reduced serum concentration of H1N1-specific antibodies five days after vaccination, whereas antibody titers at later time points did not differ between the conditions.These findings concur with the notion that sleep is a supportive influence in the very early stage of an adaptive immune response to a viral antigen. However, our results do not support the view that acute sleep deprivation has lasting effects on the human antibody titer response to influenza vaccination.The lack of time to sleep is a hallmark of modern living, and it is commonly assumed that in the long run this makes us unwell. This assumption is supported by experimental data showing that acute sleep deprivation decreases or decelerates the production of antigen- specific antibodies if sleep is interrupted in the night following the vaccination [1,2], indicating that poor sleep patterns potentially counteract the process of effective adaptive immune responses. Sleep is assumed to regulate immune function primarily by fostering adaptive immune responses [3-5]. In the present study, we investigated a 7-week antibody titer in males and females in response to a novel influenza A H1N1 virus (swine flu) vaccination and measured the effects of sleep in those who had a single night of sleep deprivation versus no sleep deprivation.Overall, the antibody production did not differ between treatments and/or sexes. (P ≥ 0.302 for all Kruskal-Wallis comparisons, Figure 1AB). However, five days after vaccination, the antibody response associated with sleep deprivation was approximately 60% lower in males than that measured in those of the sleep group (P ≤ 0.050, two-tailed Mann-Whitney test; P ≤ 0.037 for the Kruskal-Wallis comparison; Figure 1C). In contrast, the immune response in women was generally not influenced by sleep deprivation (P ≥ 0.171 for all Kruskal-Wallis comparisons, Figure 1D).The EEG recordings revealed a normal sleep pat