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

Abstract

Background: Experimental studies in humans have yielded evidence that adaptive immune function, including the production of antigen-specific antibodies, is distinctly impaired when sleep is deprived at the time of first antigen exposure. Here we examined the effects of a regular 24-hour sleep-wake cycle (including 8 hours of nocturnal sleep) and a 24-hour period of continuous wakefulness on the 7-week antibody production in 11 males and 13 females in response to the H1N1 (swine flu) virus vaccination. The specific antibody titer in serum was assayed by the hemagglutination inhibition test on the days 5, 10, 17, and 52 following vaccination.

Results: 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.

Conclusions: 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.

Figure 1

The effects of sleep compared with those of sleep deprivation (SD) on the antibody titer in males and females in response to the novel influenza A H1N1 virus vaccination. The serum antibody response following the vaccination against H1N1 was assayed by the hemagglutination inhibition test (HAI) as previously described (4). The higher the HAI value, the higher the detectable serum antibody titer specific for H1N1 virus. A, antibody response split by sleep (solid line, N = 13) vs. sleep deprivation (dashed line, N = 11). B, antibody response split by females (solid line, N = 13) vs. males (dashed line, N = 11). C, antibody response in males split by sleep (solid line, N = 5) vs. sleep deprivation (dashed line, N = 6). D, antibody response in females split by sleep (solid line, N = 8) vs. sleep deprivation (dashed line, N = 5). Differences between (sub)groups were analyzed using the Kruskal-Wallis test, with Mann-Whitney U post hoc testing, and a P value ≤ 0.05 was considered statistically significant. All data are presented as means ± SEM.