To ensure vaccines work properly, men should get a good night’s sleep

https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2023/03/15/to-ensure-vaccines-work-properly-men-should-get-a-good-nights-sleep

by helsinkiandrew • 3 years ago

35 42 3 years ago

economist.com

helsinkiandrew• 3 years ago

https://archive.ph/Cqcpb

sendfoods• 3 years ago

Very interesting.

There is some evidence (to my limited knowledge, please correct me if I'm wrong) that testosterone has some immune-inhibiting properties and women's immune systems are more reactive. Can this simply be a case of men's immune systems reacting to the antibodies at a slower pace?

jml78• 3 years ago

Women are more prone to autoimmune diseases as well.

inglor_cz• 3 years ago

People should get a good night's sleep anyway.

This includes the adolescents for whom the school starts way too early.

Traubenfuchs• 3 years ago

This includes the adolescents for whom the school starts way too early.

Unfortunately, societies interest in improving public health is non existent even with plenty of low cost, high reward actions that are known and proven beyond doubt.

t3443443• 3 years ago

Maybe they should also exercise, eat healthy, not be obese, avoid stress... All of that may boost vaccine effect! That does not apply to women, because they are gorgeous, and we should not tell them what to do.

What a garbage!

Brigand• 3 years ago

It’s the data that shows the situation for women is less clear. This is good advice: when getting vaccinated make sure to get a good night sleep. Why the outrage?

t3443443• 3 years ago

Did you read the paragraph about women? It says there was too much noise in data, they could not measure positive effect of sleep! What conclusions medical professional would derive from that?

Secondly I really do not like the overall tone of the article.

astrange• 3 years ago

It's certainly believable their immune systems don't work exactly the same way. Men usually feel sicker when they get ill as well IIRC.

andy_ppp• 3 years ago

My guess is that this study is a load of nonsense, they are probably just picking up a signal for how generally healthy a population is rather than any real difference in vaccination efficacy. We know healthy people fight the virus better, how do you effectively remove that from the fighting the virus better by vaccination? Having slept well sounds like something people who would fight COVID better anyway would do. Does anyone have a link to the paper so I can see if they try to factor for these?

JusticeJuice3• 3 years ago

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(23)...

AFAIK, it's established that white blood cells are mainly produced when sleeping. So seems reasonable that lower white blood cell count makes vaccines less effective - in the same way vaccination for people with weaker immune systems are less effective.

t3443443• 3 years ago

I assume it is this one. Will not post direct link.

A meta-analysis of the associations between insufficient sleep duration and antibody response to vaccination K. Spiegel, A. Rey, A. Cheylus, K. Ayling, C. Benedict, T. Lange, A. Prather, Daniel J. Taylor, M. Irwin, E. van Cauter less Published 1 March 2023 Medicine, Biology, Psychology Current Biology

jgerrish• 3 years ago

Hackernews provides a cool space on the Internet at this brief moment in time. It's wonderful randomly seeing passionate voices that are experts in their field speak up in comments.

Your input is appreciated, but I hope this space doesn't help breed hatred.

It's tough in today's world resisting the urge to take down others when we're suffering. But we all lose when we alienate those others who can bring intellectual sparks of joy into this world. Every voice matters, however brief it is.

favaq• 3 years ago

His message, at least the way I read it, is a message of love for men. It's sad that you have seen hatred in it. Perhaps you should reflect.

JusticeJuice3• 3 years ago

That does not apply to women, because they are gorgeous, and we should not tell them what to do.

I am baffled how you took that away from the article. Did we read the same thing? This is what they had to say about the results for women.

As for why the results in women were not significant, Dr Spiegel and her colleagues theorise that sleep affects female response to vaccines too but that hormone interference, driven by varying stages of the menstrual cycle, contraception and hormone-replacement therapies, is probably altering immune response in profound and unknown ways that throw off the results. It is a subject area that urgently needs more attention, argue the researchers.

???

SamoyedFurFluff2• 3 years ago

Wait, hormone replacement therapies in women? I don’t understand this one. If we are referring to transgender women, I think they’re like less than 1% of the population or something so it doesn’t make sense to rule out all women for an outlier. If we are referring to menopausal women, I don’t believe hormone replacement for menopause is very popular (I heard it causes health problems??). Also don’t men also get hormone replacement, ie they use steroids to get buff but also increasingly the concern of being low-testosterone has caused an increase of men supplementing testosterone especially when older?

praxulus• 3 years ago

Dr Spiegel says that encouraging patients to get plenty of sleep before and after a vaccination appointment is an ideal way for a medical system to maximise its vaccine stock and ensure that the benefits granted are as large as possible.

They don't limit their recommendation to only men, all patients should be encouraged to get plenty of sleep.

What on earth are you talking about?

sandworm1013• 3 years ago

I was turned off before the part about women. Im too tired for more lectures about how im supposed to spend more time being less tired. Sunday morning. The boss needs something done by 0900 and then i have a conference call at 1000 ( a "coms check" ahead of the real call monday morning). So it's time to stop reading about sleep and do the thing that pays the bills.

cactusplant7374• 3 years ago

What company in tech has mandatory Sunday work?

Seems a little extreme. I'm guessing most companies don't have this so the best option is to work for one of them.

Eumenes• 3 years ago

You can do all those things, and not get a vaccine, and be in good shape too!

thuridas• 3 years ago

It makes a lot of sense. Stress and lack off sleep affect the immunitary system.

And imagine if we could improve the effectiveness of vaccines in half of the world population by applying then in the right moment of them menstrual cycle.

DeathArrow• 3 years ago

I will conjecture that for anything to work properly is good to have a good night's sleep. :)

bluenose69• 3 years ago

The actual paper is available in PDF form at https://www.cell.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0960-9822%2823%2900..., in case anybody wants to look at the statistics.

chillbill• 3 years ago

How to Lie with Statistics 101: It's self reported short sleep and a tiny sample size of 299 people aged 18 to 65.

Smells like BS.

fithisux• 3 years ago

Oh, not again :-(

To ensure vaccines work properly, men should get a good night’s sleep

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