Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2019 Dec 19;5(3):167-184.
doi: 10.3233/NHA-180043.

Metabolism of sleep and aging: Bridging the gap using metabolomics

Arjun Sengupta  1   2 , Aalim M Weljie  1   2
Affiliations
Review

Metabolism of sleep and aging: Bridging the gap using metabolomics

Arjun Sengupta et al. Nutr Healthy Aging. .

Abstract

Sleep is a conserved behavior across the evolutionary timescale. Almost all known animal species demonstrate sleep or sleep like states. Despite extensive study, the mechanistic aspects of sleep need are not very well characterized. Sleep appears to be needed to generate resources that are utilized during the active stage/wakefulness as well as clearance of waste products that accumulate during wakefulness. From a metabolic perspective, this means sleep is crucial for anabolic activities. Decrease in anabolism and build-up of harmful catabolic waste products is also a hallmark of aging processes. Through this lens, sleep and aging processes are remarkably parallel- for example behavioral studies demonstrate an interaction between sleep and aging. Changes in sleep behavior affect neurocognitive phenotypes important in aging such as learning and memory, although the underlying connections are largely unknown. Here we draw inspiration from the similar metabolic effects of sleep and aging and posit that large scale metabolic phenotyping, commonly known as metabolomics, can shed light to interleaving effects of sleep, aging and progression of diseases related to aging. In this review, data from recent sleep and aging literature using metabolomics as principal molecular phenotyping methods is collated and compared. The present data suggests that metabolic effects of aging and sleep also demonstrate similarities, particularly in lipid metabolism and amino acid metabolism. Some of these changes also overlap with metabolomic data available from clinical studies of Alzheimer's disease. Together, metabolomic technologies show promise in elucidating interleaving effects of sleep, aging and progression of aging disorders at a molecular level.

Keywords: Alzheimer’s disease; Sleep; aging; metabolism; metabolomics.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors have no conflict of interest to report.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Overlap of metabolic features across plasma/serum human metabolomics studies from the field of aging, sleep and AD. Detailed data is presented in supplementary information S1. A: Overlap of sleep, aging and AD biomarkers. Metabolites that are replicated across multiple sleep, aging and AD studies were compared and the overlaps among them were analyzed. Tryptophan was the only metabolite found to be unique across the sets. B. Overlap of aging and AD effects of sleep loss: Metabolites that are found to be replicated across multiple sleep and at least one aging/AD studies were compared. Tryptophan and PC 36:6 were found to be overlapping between these sets.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Interplay of metabolic changes manifested by aging, sleep loss and AD in connection to altered physiological processes. Aging and sleep loss both induces oxidative stress and disrupts immune function. In addition, aging also impacts membrane integrity. Such events are also related to AD pathologies. These changes in physiological processes are also exemplified by specific overlapping peripheral metabolic changes, in particular, changes in tryptophan metabolism and phosphatidylcholine level.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. World Health Organization. World Report on Ageing and Health [Internet]. 2015. [cited 2017 Jul 14]. Available from: http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/186463/1/9789240694811_eng.pdf?...
    1. Inouye SK, Studenski S, Tinetti ME, Kuchel GA. Geriatric syndromes: Clinical, research, and policy implications of a core geriatric concept. J Am Geriatr Soc [Internet]. NIH Public Access; 2007 May [cited 2017 Jul 14];55(5):780–91. Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17493201 - PMC - PubMed
    1. López-Otín C, Galluzzi L, Freije JMP, Madeo F, Kroemer G. Metabolic Control of Longevity. Cell. 2016;166:802–21. - PubMed
    1. Dorffner G, Vitr M, Anderer P. The Effects of Aging on Sleep Architecture in Healthy Subjects, In Springer, Cham; 2015 [cited 2017 Jul 14]. 93–100. Available from: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/978-3-319-08939-3_13 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Wimmer ME, Rising J, Galante RJ, Wyner A, Pack AI, Abel T. Aging in Mice Reduces the Ability to Sustain Sleep/Wake States, Norris CM, editor. One [Internet]. Public Library of Science; 2013. Dec 16 [cited 2017 Jul 14];8(12):e81880 Available from: http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0081880 - DOI - PMC - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources