Skipping sleep bad for brains

Prolonged lack of sleep could be more serious than previously thought, a study involving mice suggests.

Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine kept the mice on sleep patterns similar to those of night workers—three consecutive night shifts with only four to five hours of sleep in each 24-hour period—finding that the mice permanently lost 25 percent of brain cells in part of the brain stem, according to BBC News.

The study’s authors said that the next step in research would be looking at the brains of night-shift workers after death for signs of damage, and suggested medicine could be developed in the future to protect the brain from the side-effects of lost sleep.

“[Mice] might be simple animals, but this suggests to us that we are going to have to look very carefully in humans,” said Sigrid Veasey of the Center for Sleep and Circadian Neurobiology.