How sleep helps to recover
Scientists have found out why sleep is useful for sick people
The well-being of a sick person noticeably improves after sleep for the reason that at this time the body "reprograms" immune cells, forcing them to fight infection more actively. This conclusion was reached by doctors who published an article in the Journal of Experimental Medicine.
"Sleep increases the efficiency of T cells and their response to various threats. This is especially important today, given how widespread sleep disorders are and the various problems that lead to them, including depression and stress," says Luciana Besedovsky from the University of Tübingen (in a press release How sleep can fight infection – VM).
As scientists believe today, the brain and hormonal system of humans and all other animals constantly produces two types of signals – one of them makes the body sleep, and the other does not let it fall asleep. Fluctuations in the strength of these signals generated by circadian rhythms make us fall asleep at night and wake up in the morning, and disturbances in their work can lead to the development of insomnia or narcolepsy.
In recent years, biologists have found more and more evidence that they affect not only the desire to sleep, but also the work of many cellular systems. In particular, sleep disorders have been associated with the accelerated development of Alzheimer's disease, rapid aging of all body cells and many other serious health problems.
Besedowski and her colleagues discovered another interesting example of how sleep affects the body's work by observing how T cells, the main "conductors" of the immune system, recognized infected cells, attached and killed them.
About ten years ago, as the doctor notes, scientists found out that our body produces two types of signals that affect similar forms of T-cell activity. Some of them, known since the middle of the last century, stimulate immunity, while others, discovered recently, on the contrary, suppress it.
German scientists were interested in what kind of "inhibitory" signals prevent these corpuscles from connecting with infected cells and eliminating them. To do this, scientists collected blood samples from people infected with a relatively harmless cytomegalovirus, and monitored how T cells grown in different conditions would attack them.
This helped them identify four types of substances, including the sex hormones prostoglandins, which "reprogrammed" T cells in such a way that they began to produce fewer proteins that help them cling to infected "clients".
Analyzing the properties and origin of these signaling molecules, the researchers noticed one thing they had in common – the concentration of all these "brakes" of the immune system noticeably decreased during sleep.
Guided by this idea, scientists conducted a small experiment, enlisting the support of several dozen carriers of the virus and healthy people. Dividing them into two groups, Besedowski and her colleagues allowed one of them to lead a normal lifestyle in their laboratory, while the members of the other were completely deprived of sleep.
As their observations showed, the activity of immunity in the first half of the volunteers increased markedly during sleep, while in the second team of participants in the experiments it remained low. This, according to the researchers, may explain why many sick people become noticeably easier after they fall asleep.
Now Besedowski and her colleagues are trying to understand whether it is possible to cause such changes in the work of the body artificially. Such drugs will not only help to fight infections more actively, but can also enhance the effect of anti-cancer immunotherapy.
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