Social support moderates the relationship between sleep and inflammation in a population at high risk for developing cardiovascular disease
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Poor sleep and low social support have each been associated with mortality and morbidity from chronic illness, and a small body of research suggests that the two interact to influence systemic inflammation whereby good social relationships may buffer the relationship between poor sleep and increased inflammation. The current study investigated interactions between sleep and social support in the prediction of inflammation in a clinical population (prehypertensive and hypertensive individuals) at high risk for the development of cardiovascular disease. Using a standardized subjective measure of sleep quality, we found that social support moderated the association between sleep and circulating levels of both IL‐6 and CRP, such that poor sleep appeared to confer a risk of increased inflammation only in those participants who also reported low social support. In women, the same relationship was observed for TNF‐α. These results extend previous findings into a clinical population and also demonstrate that sleep quality and social support interact in the prediction of two previously uninvestigated clinically relevant inflammatory markers (CRP and TNF‐α). High levels of perceived social support may compensate for the negative health impact of poor sleep quality and vice versa.
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In pre-hypertensive and hypertensive individuals, social support moderated the association between sleep disturbance and elevated IL-6 and CRP, with poor sleep conferring risk only in those with low social support.
“social support moderated the association between sleep disturbance and elevated levels of IL-6 and CRP, in which poor sleep appeared to confer a risk of increased inflammation only in those participants who also reported low social support (Tomfohr et al, 2015).”
From Sleep health: Reciprocal regulation of sleep and innate immunity (2017) · cites this paper as Tomfohr et al, 2015
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Sorted by citations
Sleep health: Reciprocal regulation of sleep and innate immunity
Irwin, M. R., & Opp, M. R. (2017) · Neuropsychopharmacology · doi:10.1038/npp.2016.148 · Cited by 624 · see citing works
Social support, social integration, and inflammatory cytokines: a meta-analysis
Uchino, B. N., Trettevik, R., Kent de Grey, R. G., Cronan, S., Hogan, J., & Baucom, B. R. W. (2018) · Health Psychology · doi:10.1037/hea0000594 · Cited by 320 · see citing works
- Authors
- Tomfohr, L. M., Edwards, K. M., Madsen, J. W., & Mills, P. J.
- Affiliations
- Department of Psychology University of Calgary Calgary Alberta Canada
- The University of Sydney (AU)
- University of Calgary (CA)
- University of California San Diego (US)
- Venue
- Psychophysiology
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2015-09-24
- Volume
- 52
- Issue
- 12
- Pages
- 1689-1697
- ISSN
- 0048-5772 (ISSN-L)
- 1469-8986
- PMC
- PMC4715742
- OpenAlex
- W1946986840
- Cited by
- 33
- References
- 77
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 1 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 2 · 2021: 4 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 5 · 2017: 2 · 2016: 4
- FWCI
- 5.47
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Psychophysiology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- Alberta Children's Hospital Research Institute (LMT)
- NIH (HL44915 (to PJM))
- University of California San Diego Clinical and Translational Science (UL1TR000100, and P60 MD00220 (San Diego EXPORT Center Grant))
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Sleep and related disorders
- Social Sciences › Health › Health disparities and outcomes
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Sleep and Wakefulness Research
- Keywords
- sleep quality, social support, systemic inflammation, interleukin-6, C-reactive protein, TNF-α, hypertension, prehypertension, cardiovascular risk, sex differences
- MeSH terms
- Adult, C-Reactive Protein, Cardiovascular Diseases, Female, Humans, Hypertension, Inflammation, Male, Middle Aged, Sleep, Social Support, Tumor Necrosis Factor-alpha, Interleukin-6
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