Lack of sleep and depressive symptoms have increased during the pandemic, but little is known how sleep disturbance impacts COVID-19 infection risk and outcomes.
Rising temperatures are not only affecting the environment, it’s been found it can also impact sleep and weaken immunity against infections.
Dr Michael Irwin, a University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) professor of psychiatry and biobehavioural sciences, says while there are few studies on how ambient temperature affects sleep, they indicate it is contributing to sleep disturbance and reduced immune responses.
In his research review published in the journal Temperature, Irwin said we should be looking at how climate change affects disease outbreak.
“No one has previously put together this notion that the ongoing climate crisis is contributing to sleep disturbance and that it’s possibly contributing to the altered risk of infectious disease we’re seeing,” Irwin said.
The paper comes at a time when poliovirus has re-emerged in different parts of the world, as well as a monkeypox surge and the enduring COVID-19 pandemic.
There is plenty of evidence that lack of sleep and depressive symptoms have significantly risen during the pandemic.
But there is not much known about how lack of sleep is impacting COVID-19 infection risk and outcomes.
However, there was a study of over 46,000 patients which recently indicated that there is a link between a significant sleep disturbance and an over 2-fold increase in the mortality risk for COVID-19 patients, and there was no similar association found in those who did not.
Among the research he cited, it has been shown that longer sleep results in a decrease in bacterial load and enhances survival in a range of infectious disease models.
Self-reported surveys have also found correlations between shorter sleep and higher risk of infection.
Irwin said there should also be a focus on disparity issues, as low-income communities have less access to air conditioning and are more exposed to heat.
“Just like the pandemic is impacting socioeconomically disadvantaged and ethnic groups disproportionately with more morbid outcomes, it might be that increase in ambient temperature we’re seeing are further exaggerating those risk profiles,” he said.
