MGH research finds chemical pathway from lack of shut-eye to atherosclerosis, reports The Harvard Gazette.
In their experiments, conducted on mice fed a high-fat diet and genetically preprogrammed to develop atherosclerosis, the sleep-deprived mice had more white blood cells in their bloodstreams and developed larger plaques, and those plaques contained more white blood cells than those of control mice whose sleep wasn’t disrupted. Researchers then gave supplemental hypocretin to the sleep-deprived mice and found that the prevalence of atherosclerosis declined.
