Should people with sleep disorders be part of the covid risk groups, as well as the immunocompromised, health workers or the elderly and, consequently, have special protection? This is the question that a group of specialists from the Research Institute (I3PT) will try to answer, which investigates the relationship between poor rest, immunity against viruses and the severity of covid.
The research is in the field work phase. In a year, the team headed by pulmonologists Andrea Grau and María José Masdeu hopes to have the analysis of data from 4,000 patients diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea. "It will be looked at how many had covid during the first year of the pandemic, with the aim of knowing if they were infected more than the general population and if they had the disease in a more serious form", says Masdeu.
Having a sleep disorder, sleeping little or not enjoying quality rest is harmful to the immune system. This is proven. Researchers now aim to establish the relationship between sleep, immunity and the response to covid infection. "We start from the hypothesis that during the first wave there was the feeling that people with diagnosed and treated apnea had more income and developed more serious forms of covid", points out Dr. Grau. The work will try to confirm this idea.
In a second phase, it will be studied whether the most seriously ill could have an undiagnosed sleep disorder. For this reason, several clinical parameters of the patients will be evaluated and the quality of their sleep will be analyzed using a watch that will be given to them by the hospital and that they will use at home.
Finally, the project will analyze the innate immunity of patients who have overcome the coronavirus, both severely and mildly, with or without sleep disorders. The sample will be made up of people who will participate in this year's flu vaccination campaign. Researchers expect that sleep-disordered individuals who have experienced severe covid have an immune system that is less responsive to the flu vaccine.
Ultimately, the researchers aim to find out if patients with obstructive sleep apnea had a more severe covid, how many covid patients had an undiagnosed sleep disorder that may have conditioned the severity of the infection, and whether patients with poor rest they have a weaker immune system to deal with the coronavirus.
According to Andrea Grau, depending on the result, it can be established whether it is appropriate to include those affected by sleep disorders in the special protection groups against covid, to which vaccination is recommended at least once a year. At the same time, it may turn out that the development of the disease in a serious form can hide a previous sleep disorder that should be diagnosed.
