Biology Faculty Articles
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
10-7-2019
Publication Title
PLoS One
Keywords
Sleep, Microbiome, Shannon index, Simpson index, Interaction networks, Cytokines, Immune physiology
ISSN
1932-6203
Volume
14
Issue/No.
10
First Page
e0222394
Abstract
The human gut microbiome can influence health through the brain-gut-microbiome axis. Growing evidence suggests that the gut microbiome can influence sleep quality. Previous studies that have examined sleep deprivation and the human gut microbiome have yielded conflicting results. A recent study found that sleep deprivation leads to changes in gut microbiome composition while a different study found that sleep deprivation does not lead to changes in gut microbiome. Accordingly, the relationship between sleep physiology and the gut microbiome remains unclear. To address this uncertainty, we used actigraphy to quantify sleep measures coupled with gut microbiome sampling to determine how the gut microbiome correlates with various measures of sleep physiology. We measured immune system biomarkers and carried out a neurobehavioral assessment as these variables might modify the relationship between sleep and gut microbiome composition. We found that total microbiome diversity was positively correlated with increased sleep efficiency and total sleep time, and was negatively correlated with wake after sleep onset. We found positive correlations between total microbiome diversity and interleukin-6, a cytokine previously noted for its effects on sleep. Analysis of microbiome composition revealed that within phyla richness of Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes were positively correlated with sleep efficiency, interleukin-6 concentrations and abstract thinking. Finally, we found that several taxa (Lachnospiraceae, Corynebacterium, and Blautia) were negatively correlated with sleep measures. Our findings initiate linkages between gut microbiome composition, sleep physiology, the immune system and cognition. They may lead to mechanisms to improve sleep through the manipulation of the gut microbiome.
Additional Comments
NSU Presidents Faculty Research and Development grant #: 335411
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
NSUWorks Citation
Smith, Robert; Cole Easson; Sarah M. Lyle; Ritishka Kapoor; Chase P. Donnelly; Eileen Davidson; Esha Parikh; Jose Lopez; and Jaime L. Tartar. 2019. "Gut Microbiome Diversity Is Associated with Sleep Physiology in Humans." PLoS One 14, (10): e0222394. doi:10.1371/journal. pone.0222394.
ORCID ID
0000-0002-1637-4125
ResearcherID
F-8809-2011
DOI
10.1371/journal. pone.0222394
Comments
©2019 Smith et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.