Researchers develop blood-based markers to detect sleep deprivation

Sleep deprivation can adversely affect an individual's health by weakening the immune system, leading to increased susceptibility to illnesses. It also impairs cognitive function, memory, and decision-making abilities, which can affect performance at work and increase the risk of accidents.

Increased level of sleep deprivation increases the risk of serious injury or fatality in safety-critical situations. The biomarker developed used a combination of markers found in the blood of healthy volunteers. Together, these markers accurately predicted when the study volunteers had been awake for more than 24 hours under controlled laboratory conditions.

The biomarker accurately detects 24-hour wakefulness with 99.2% accuracy when compared to well-rested samples. Alone, it maintains high accuracy at 89.1%. This innovation holds potential for various safety-critical environments, mitigating risks of accidents due to sleep deprivation.

“This is a really exciting discovery for sleep scientists and could be transformative to the future management of health and safety relating to insufficient sleep. While more work is required, this is a promising first step,” said Professor Clare Anderson Professor of Sleep and Circadian Science at the University of Birmingham.

The sleep deprivation biomarker can detect periods of wakefulness lasting 18 hours or more, although its primary focus is on identifying instances of 24 hours or longer without sleep. Developing a biomarker specifically for limited sleep during the previous night is a possibility, but further research is needed to integrate both the duration of wakefulness and the amount of sleep into accurate predictions.

References: KATHERINE JEPPE, SUZANNE FTOUNI, BRUNDA NIJAGAL, LEILAH K. GRANT, STEVEN W. LOCKLEY, SHANTHA M. W. RAJARATNAM, ANDREW J. K. PHILLIPS, MALCOLM J. MCCONVILLE, DEDREIA TULL, AND CLARE ANDERSON; Journal: Science Advances; DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adj6834