Researchers say they have made the first step towards developing a test that can accurately calculate how much sleep a person has had.
The Sleep Research Centre at the University of Surrey carried out a study, led by Professor Derk-Jan Dijk, in which 36 participants skipped one night of sleep. During a 40-hour period of sleep deprivation, blood samples were taken and changes in the expression levels of thousands of genes were measured.
A machine learning algorithm identified a subset of 68 genes and with 92 percent accuracy could detect whether a sample was from a sleep-deprived or well-rested individual.
“Identifying these biomarkers is the first step to developing a test which can accurately calculate how much sleep an individual has had,” said Simon Archer, Professor of Molecular Biology of Sleep at the University of Surrey. “The very existence of such biomarkers in the blood after only a period of 24-hour wakefulness shows the physiological impact a lack of sleep can have on our body.”
The discovery could pave the way for a future test that will be able to assess if a driver is sleep deprived. Previous research in this area from the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety has shown that drivers who get just one to two hours less than the recommended daily allowance in a 24-hour period nearly double their risk for a car crash.
“We all know that insufficient sleep poses a significant risk to our physical and mental health, particularly over a period of time,” said Dr Emma Laing, Senior Lecturer in Bioinformatics at the University of Surrey. “However, it is difficult to independently assess how much sleep a person has had, making it difficult for the police to know if drivers were fit to drive, or for employers to know if staff are fit for work.”
The research is published in the journal SLEEP and is freely available.
