Getting seven or more hours of a sleep in a night may help the effectiveness of some vaccinations, according to a new report from researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, and the University of California, Berkeley.
Lead researcher Aric Prather examined 125 men and women between the ages of 40 and 60 who were in the process of being vaccinated for hepatitis B. That vaccine is given in two doses, which are spaced apart by six months. They found that those who slept six or fewer hours a night were less likely to reap the full benefits of the vaccine.
"People who slept less than six hours on average were 11.5 times more likely to be unprotected [after the vaccine] than those who slept more than seven hours," Prather said in a news release.
"We measured antibody response just before the second vaccine and just before the third, and then six months after the series was over," he added. "What we found was, people who slept fewer hours on average produced fewer antibodies to the vaccine."
The new data appears in the current edition of the journal Sleep.
by RTT Staff Writer
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