Sleep Health, Inflammation, and Emotion Study

Study Summary

Late-life depression is a major public health burden due to its high prevalence and associated morbidity, suicide risk, functional decline, and mortality. Unfortunately, current antidepressant therapies have limited effectiveness; hence, biologically plausible models for new treatments are being pursued. Systemic inflammation is hypothesized to play an important role on the onset and perpetuation of depression, especially in older women. Aging processes involve a heightened inflammatory state, and both inflammatory disorders and depression are more prevalent in women than men. However, increased systemic inflammation does not necessarily lead to depression in all women. Even when robust systemic inflammation is experimentally induced (e.g. endotoxin administration), largely variable increases in depressive symptoms are found. Defining the factors that account for this variability may identify individuals at risk of developing depression when exposed to heightened inflammatory states such as aging, obesity, and chronic disease, and informs future translational studies of depression prevention. In particular, the role of sleep disturbance in explaining this variability requires further attention because it is an independent risk factor for depression and heightens systemic inflammation by increasing the production of proinflammatory cytokines. The investigators have also discovered that women, but not men, who report sleep disturbance including short sleep duration experience significantly more depressive symptoms in response to an inflammatory challenge than women without sleep disturbance. Thus, it is hypothesized that sleep loss is a vulnerability factor for inflammation-induced depressive symptoms in women. However, to date, no experimental approach has been used to evaluate the role of sleep loss on inflammation-induced depressive symptoms. This proposal aims to examine this hypothesis by partial sleep deprivation (PSD) followed by endotoxin challenge in older wo

Primary Outcome

Short Form of the Profile of Mood States (POMS-SF)

Interventions

• OTHER Placebo
• BIOLOGICAL Endotoxin
• BEHAVIORAL Partial sleep deprivation
• OTHER Uninterrupted sleep