Key result
One night of sleep deprivation increases systolic blood pressure by ~5 mmHg vs. rested sleep.
Why the study?
The mechanisms through which sleep loss impacts blood pressure remain largely unknown, including the interrelated brain and peripheral body systems regulating vascular function.
Does one night of sleep deprivation increase blood pressure and alter brain-body cardiovascular regulation in healthy adults?
Does one night of sleep deprivation increase blood pressure and alter brain-body cardiovascular regulation in healthy adults?
One night of sleep deprivation significantly increases blood pressure and alters functional connectivity in brain regions regulating vascular tone, highlighting a mechanistic brain-body link for sleep-loss-induced cardiovascular risk.
Acute sleep loss may raise BP in healthy adults; leaves open mechanistic and clinical relevance pending larger trials.
Poor sleep is associated with hypertension, a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease 1,2 . However, the mechanism(s) through which sleep loss impacts blood pressure remain largely unknown, including the inter-related brain and peripheral body systems that regulate vascular function 3 . In a repeated-measures experimental study of 66 healthy adult participants, we demonstrate four core findings addressing this question. First, a night of sleep loss significantly increased blood pressure—both systolic and diastolic, yet this change in vascular tone was independent of any increase in heart rate. Second, sleep loss compromised functional brain connectivity within regions that regulate vascular tone. Third, sleep-loss related changes in brain connectivity and vascular tone were significantly inter-dependent, with changes in brain nodes explaining the shift towards hypertension. Fourth, sleep-loss related changes in mood, specifically reductions in positive and amplification in negative states, each demonstrated an interaction with the impairments in brain connectivity and blood pressure. Together, these findings support an embodied framework in which sleep loss confers increased risk of cardiovascular disease through interactions between brain homeostatic control, mood-state and blood pressure.
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Krause et al. (2021) studied Healthy (n=66). Sleep deprivation vs. Sleep rested (one night of normal sleep) was evaluated on Systolic blood pressure (p=0.003). A single night of sleep deprivation significantly increased systolic blood pressure to 112.1 mmHg compared to 107.6 mmHg after a rested night, independent of any increase in heart rate.
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