I wanted to share with you today an article from Quanta magazine which focuses on “Why Sleep Deprivation Kills”.

We all know about the importance of sleep as an integral component of overall health.

We have all experienced the negative effects of a lack of sleep on our health and cognitive function.

Despite decades of research, sleep is still a poorly understood process and why a lack of sleep can cause such significant negative health effects.

Now it appears that part of the answer to this question may have finally been resolved.

As it suggests in the article, many of us would assume that the origin of these types of issues would be focused in the brain however it turns out that this may not in fact be the case, but rather due to the generation of ROS (Reactive Oxygen Species) in the gut.

It is a bit of a long article so here are the abstract as well as study highlights.

If you want to read the whole article you can click on the link above.

Feeling dead tired? Scientists may finally be on the verge of learning why too little sleep is inevitably fatal.
  Article| Volume 181, ISSUE 6, P1307-1328.e15, June 11, 2020

Sleep Loss Can Cause Death through Accumulation of Reactive Oxygen Species
in the Gut

• Alexandra Vaccaro ² Yosef Kaplan Dor ² Keishi Nambara Cindy Lin  Michael E. Greenberg Dragana Rogulja ³

Published:June 04, 2020DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2020.04.049

Highlights

• Sleep deprivation leads to ROS accumulation in the fly and mouse gut
• Gut-accumulated ROS trigger oxidative stress in this organ
• Preventing ROS accumulation in the gut allows survival without sleep in flies

Summary

The view that sleep is essential for survival is supported by the ubiquity of this behavior, the apparent existence of sleep-like states in the earliest animals, and the fact that severe sleep loss can be lethal. The cause of this lethality is unknown.

Here we show, using flies and mice, that sleep deprivation leads to accumulation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and consequent oxidative stress, specifically in the gut. ROS are not just correlates of sleep deprivation but drivers of death: their neutralization prevents oxidative stress and allows flies to have a normal lifespan with little to no sleep.

The rescue can be achieved with oral antioxidant compounds or with gut-targeted transgenic expression of antioxidant enzymes. We conclude that death upon severe sleep restriction can be caused by oxidative stress, that the gut is central in this process, and that survival without sleep is possible when ROS accumulation is prevented.

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