Sleep Disturbance, Sleep Duration, and Inflammation: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Cohort Studies and Experimental Sleep Deprivation

Irwin MR, Olmstead R, Carroll JE · Biological Psychiatry

Sleep disturbance was associated with higher CRP (ES 0.12) and IL-6 (ES 0.20) but not TNF; long sleep (over 8 h) also associated with both markers, short sleep as an extreme with neither; and experimental sleep deprivation (12 samples) and multi-night restriction (5 samples, N = 98; IL-6 ES 0.13, 95% CI −0.21 to 0.47) were associated with no marker.

Population

>50,000 participants across 72 cohort and experimental studies

Intervention

Sleep disturbance / extreme sleep durations

Comparator

Normal sleep

Limitations

Small pooled effect sizes; observational, with sleep assessed once and no prospective designs, so direction cannot be read; no cartilage or joint-structure outcomes anywhere in the literature pool. NIH-funded; no conflicts declared.