Inflammation Is Suppressed During Sleep, New Research Finds

Amy Taylor August 22, 2016

Getting a good night sleep is essential to your health in many ways. One of which is in suppressing inflammation in your body, according to new research.

The study, published in The FASEB Journal, identified a protein that is created by our body’s biological clock which actively represses inflammatory pathways within the affected areas during the night. The protein, named CRYPTOCHROME, has proven anti-inflammatory effects in cultured cells and presents new opportunities for the development of drugs that may be used to treat inflammatory diseases and conditions like arthritis.

"By understanding how the biological clock regulates inflammation, we can begin to develop new treatments, which might exploit this knowledge," said Julie Gibbs, Ph.D., a researcher involved in the work and arthritis research UK career development fellow at the Centre for Endocrinology and Diabetes at the Institute of Human Development at the University of Manchester, United Kingdom.

"Furthermore, by adapting the time of day at which current drug therapies are administered, we may be able to make them more effective."

For the study, the researchers harvested tissues of healthy humans. Such cells, called "fibroblast-like synoviocytes” keep a 24-hour rhythm, and when this rhythm was disrupted by knocking out the cryptochrome gene there was an increased inflammatory response. This suggests that the cryptochrome gene product, the CRYPTOCHROME protein, has significant anti-inflammatory effects. T

"This study reminds us that inflammation, typically thought of as chronic and brittle, can, in fact, be nuanced—In this case, under the influence of the brain’s suprachiasmatic nucleus, which controls the body’s circadian physiology," said Thoru Pederson, Ph.D., Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal. "The clinical implications are far-reaching."

Source of this article:

L. E. Hand et al, The circadian clock regulates inflammatory arthritis, The FASEB Journal (2016)

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