Research
Hormonal
Prolonged sleep loss or wakefulness acts as a stressor that suppresses immune function, increasing susceptibility to infection and inflammation.
Chronic sleep loss is not just fatigue; it is a state of physiological stress that suppresses your immune system. Consistently getting less than 7 hours of sleep increases your risk of infection and inflammation.
GoodRefutesHIGH confidence
We will close with some remarks about the detrimental effects of prolonged sleep loss on immune functions showing the importance of proper sleep for general health.
Why this rating
The paper cites studies showing increased susceptibility to infection and altered cytokine profiles after sleep loss.
Source
Sleep and immune function
Luciana Besedovsky et al. · Pflügers Archiv - European Journal of Physiology · 2011
DOI 10.1007/s00424-011-1044-0
narrative_reviewCited 1,106×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- Sleep, particularly slow-wave sleep, enhances the formation of immunological memory by facilitating the redistribution of naïve T cells to lymph nodes and promoting pro-inflammatory cytokine production (e.g., IL-12, IL-1, TNF-alpha).Good
- Daytime wakefulness is associated with the mobilization of cytotoxic effector cells (NK cells, CTLs) to peripheral blood to provide immediate immunosurveillance against injury or infection.Good
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