Experts from Monash University in Australia and the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom have developed a blood test that can accurately detect when someone has not slept for 24 hours.
This level of sleep deprivation increases the risk of serious injury or death in safety-critical situations.
Published in Scientific advances, the biomarker used a combination of markers found in the blood of healthy volunteers. Together, these markers accurately predicted when study volunteers had been awake for more than 24 hours under controlled laboratory conditions.
The biomarker detected whether individuals had been awake for 24 hours with a 99.2 percent chance of being correct, compared to its own well-rested sample. When a single sample was considered without the rest comparison (similar to a diagnostic blood test), it fell to 89.1 percent, which is still very high.
Given that around 20 percent of traffic accidents worldwide are caused by lack of sleep, researchers hope the discovery can inform future tests to quickly and easily identify private drivers. of sleep. The biomarker could also be developed for other situations where lack of sleep can have catastrophic consequences, such as in workplaces where safety is critical.
Lead author Professor Clare Anderson led the research while at Monash University’s School of Psychological Sciences and the Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health. She is currently a Professor of Sleep and Circadian Sciences at the University of Birmingham (United Kingdom).
“This is a really exciting discovery for sleep scientists and could be transformative for the future management of health and safety related to sleep deprivation,” Professor Anderson said. “Although more work is required, this is a promising first step.
“There is strong evidence that sleeping less than five hours is associated with unsafe driving, but driving after 24 hours of wakefulness, which is what we detected here, would be at least comparable to more than double the Australian legal blood alcohol limit.”
The test may also be ideal for future forensic use, but additional validation is required.
First author Dr Katy Jeppe, from the Monash Proteomics and Metabolomics Platform, formerly from the School of Psychological Sciences, said it was difficult to say when the test could be developed for use after an accident.
“The next steps would be to test it in a less controlled environment and perhaps under forensic conditions, especially if it is to be used as evidence of accidents where drivers fall asleep,” Dr Jeppe said.
“Since this is blood, the test is more limited in the road context, but future work could examine whether our metabolites, and therefore the biomarker, are evident in saliva or breath.”
This sleep deprivation biomarker is based on 24 hours or more of wakefulness, but can detect up to 18 hours of wakefulness. A biomarker of limited sleep during the previous night could be developed, but more research is needed to combine time since sleep with amount of sleep in predictions.
“Much more work would be needed if the laws were changed and sleep deprivation testing was introduced on the road or in workplaces,” Dr Jeppe said. “This would include further validation of biomarkers, as well as establishing safe levels of sleep to prevent and recover from decline, not to mention the extensive legal process.”
“A biomarker for lack of sleep during the previous night could be developed, and others have made progress in this regard (Depner et al.).”
Lack of sleep can have fatal consequences for other safety-critical occupations. Major disasters, such as the Chernobyl nuclear reactor meltdown and the space shuttle Challenger disaster*, are believed to be caused, in part, by human errors associated with fatigue.
“Objective tests are urgently needed to identify individuals who pose a risk to themselves or others in situations where the cost of an error is fatal,” Professor Anderson said.
“Alcohol testing was a game-changer in reducing traffic accidents and the associated serious injuries and deaths, and we may be able to do the same with fatigue. But a lot of work is still required to reach this goal.”
This research was carried out in association with the Cooperative Investigation Alert, Security and Productivity Center.