Atherosclerosis and sleep
Frequent awakenings at night increased the risk of atherosclerosis
Sergey Kolenov, N+1
Intermittent night sleep increases the level of inflammation-related leukocytes and provokes the formation of atherosclerotic plaques. Experts came to this conclusion after analyzing the quality of sleep and the health of 1,600 elderly people. The findings of the study are published in an article for the journal PLOS Biology (Vallat et al., Broken sleep predicts hardened blood vessels). According to the authors, improving the quality of sleep can become a new method of prevention and treatment of atherosclerosis.
Poor sleep quality causes serious harm to health – in particular, it increases the risk of developing atherosclerosis. Unfortunately, the mechanisms underlying this relationship remain poorly understood. According to one of the assumptions, intermittent night sleep provokes an inflammatory reaction, which in turn leads to damage to the walls of blood vessels.
A team of specialists led by Matthew P. Walker from the University of California at Berkeley undertook to test this hypothesis. To do this, the researchers analyzed the sleep quality and health status of 1,600 people over 60 years old.
The frequency of night awakenings in the participants of the experiment was determined by three independent methods. They spent one night at home with sleep sensors connected – this approach is known as polysomnography. For another week, the movements of volunteers at night were recorded by the method of actigraphy, using a device attached to the wrist. In addition, they were asked to answer questionnaire questions about the quality of sleep. The data obtained were compared with the severity of atherosclerosis (it was assessed using the coronary artery calcification index) and the concentration of leukocytes in the blood.
After a thorough analysis, the researchers concluded that frequent night awakenings are indeed characteristic of people with more severe forms of atherosclerosis. Restless sleep was also a predictor of elevated levels of monocytes and neutrophils – types of leukocytes associated with inflammation and possibly involved in the formation of atherosclerotic plaques. This relationship persisted even after the researchers took into account additional factors such as age, gender, race and smoking.
Interestingly, this conclusion concerned only objective sleep disorders detected by polysomnography and actigraphy. Subjective assessments of the volunteers themselves did not allow predicting either the concentration of leukocytes or the risk of atherosclerosis.
Similar results were recently obtained in an experiment with laboratory mice. Artificial interruption of sleep led to the fact that the level of monocytes and neutrophils in these rodents increased and the formation of atherosclerotic plaques accelerated.
The authors note that their conclusions allow us to add another item to the list of risk factors affecting the likelihood of developing atherosclerosis. It must be taken into account when diagnosing this condition. In addition, improving the quality of sleep may become one of the new strategies to combat atherosclerosis.
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