How can lack of sleep affect vaccinations?

A study suggests that people who get less sleep may have a less than optimal response to a vaccination. After adjusting for factors that could affect antibody response, researchers found that patients who received a series of Hepatitis B vaccinations did not all have the same precise immune response. In the study, 125 test subjects were fitted with sleep monitoring devices over a seven day period, after each of two hepatitis B vaccine injections. Those who slept for fewer hours had slightly less optimal immune responses to the shots. In fact, less sleep correlated to the likelihood of a lower secondary immune response, though by six months after the vaccination, clinical protection was normalized.

Sleep is crucial to optimal health, so researchers suggest there may be a basis for discussing sleep patterns with patients, before health professionals vaccinate patients. There are plan to do more research to see how this information can be used to optimize vaccine programs.

A new study suggests that a lack of sleep may weaken the effectiveness of vaccines in the body. This is the first study to look at sleep and vaccine effectiveness based on “natural” sleep data -- that is, information gathered from people sleeping in their normal environment and routine -- as opposed to data generated in a laboratory setting. It’s also another indication that low sleep and disrupted sleep habits have a negative effect on immune system function, making us more susceptible to illness.
 
Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine investigated the relationship of sleep and the effectiveness of vaccine protection among 125 healthy adults between the ages of 40-60. All the adults were vaccinated against Hepatitis B -- after being screened to make sure they’d had no exposure to the virus. Vaccination for Hepatitis B occurs in three stages, with two doses given thirty days apart, followed by a third and final dose administered 6 months after the initial vaccination. Vaccines work by introducing a weakened or inert version of the disease into the body, which stimulates the immune system to produce its own antibodies to protect against the disease.

Researchers measured the strength of antibody response before the second and third doses of the Hepatitis B vaccine. They also tested participants again 6 months after the final immunization, at which point the vaccine would have delivered the full force of its protection against the virus. Throughout the vaccination process, researchers tracked participants’ sleep using wrist monitors, and also had participants keep sleep journals where they reported not only sleep amounts, but also details on the quality of their sleep. They found:

• People who slept less produced fewer of the vaccine-inducing antibodies during the preliminary stages of immunization.
• People who slept less were less likely to be fully protected at the end of the vaccine cycle. Researchers found 15% of participants were not experiencing full protection against Hepatitis B 6 months after completing the vaccination. People who slept fewer than 6 hours a night were more than 11 times as likely to be among this group, compared to those who slept more than 7 hours nightly. 
• The association between sleep and vaccine effectiveness was limited to sleep quantity: researchers did not find that quality of sleep or efficiency of sleep were associated with vaccine effectiveness.