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Too little or too much sleep leads to higher rates of infection

An effective way to prevent infection may be going to sleep on time.
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Oleg Breslavtsev/Getty Images

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Tired healthcare workers may have even more reasons to catch up on sleep after a 12-hour shift: A good night’s rest can potentially decrease your risk of infection and lower antibiotic use.

Adults who sleep less than six hours a night were 27% more likely to report an infection in the past three months compared to those getting the CDC-recommended seven to eight hours of sleep a night, according to a study of 1,848 patients from the University of Bergen in Norway.

Researchers surveyed Norwegian patients who visited their primary care provider in 2020 about self-reported sleep patterns, and on whether or not they had been sick in the past three months.

Too much sleep is also a problem. Patients who slept more than nine hours a night were 44% more likely to report an infection compared to those sleeping the recommended amount, the study found. Patients who slept less than six hours a night, had chronic insomnia, and/or other chronic sleep problems also reported higher rates of antibiotic use, according to the study.

“The higher risk of reporting an infection […] is not that surprising, as we know that having an infection can cause both poor sleep and sleepiness,” Ingeborg Forthun, a coauthor of the study, said in a statement. “But the higher risk of an infection among those with a chronic insomnia disorder indicates that the direction of this relationship also goes in the other direction; poor sleep can make you more susceptible to an infection.”

Although the authors said that the sample size may have been too small to show clear trends between the lack of sleep and specific infection rates, they maintained that “sleep could be a potential target when developing measures to prevent infections and reduce the use of antibiotics.”

Antibiotics are often overprescribed for diseases they do not treat: Over 20% of antibiotics prescribed in the US in 2016 were considered “inappropriate” treatment, according to a 2019 study analyzing ICD-10 diagnosis codes.

Treating just six of the “most alarming” antibiotic-resistant infections costs the healthcare industry more than $4.6 billion annually, a 2021 CDC report found.

Navigate the healthcare industry

Healthcare Brew covers pharmaceutical developments, health startups, the latest tech, and how it impacts hospitals and providers to keep administrators and providers informed.