The study was with humans, which makes it that much more relevant. As most of my readers know, sleep deprivation is a definitely a “thing” in most Western countries, and it has serious health consequences such as increasing risks of infertility, diabetes, dementia, heart disease, cancer, etc. The response by Big Pharma has been to release a number of different sleeping pills (Ambien, anyone?) the vast majority of which have terrible side effects, and most importantly do not resolve neither the underlying reason for the insomnia, nor its inflammatory effects. The study below demonstrates that humble aspirin may be able to achieve what billions of dollars wasted by Big Pharma on sleeping pills R&D cold not. Namely, prevent/resolve the brain inflammation driven by chronic sleep deprivation, as well as ameliorate the cognitive dysfunction driven by said brain inflammation. It is worth pointing out that for the in-vitro portion of the study, the scientists used endotoxin/LPS to cause the brain cell inflammation. Chronic, low-grade endotoxemia is definitely also a “thing” in most modern societies and apparently aspirin can help with that as well.
https://article.imrpress.com/journal/FBL/26/6/10.52586/4928/Landmark4928.pdf
“…Results show that compared with placebo, preemptive administration of low-dose aspirin during sleep restriction reduced pro-inflammatory responses. Specifically, aspirin reduced interleukin-6 expression and COX-1/COX-2 double positive cells in lipopolysaccharide-stimulated monocytes, as well as C-reactive protein serum levels.”
“…“The novelty of this study is that it investigated whether we can pharmacologically reduce the inflammatory consequences of sleep restriction,” said lead author Larissa Engert, who has a doctorate in behavioral physiology and is a postdoctoral fellow in the department of neurology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the division of sleep medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston. “We used a non-steroidal, anti-inflammatory drug because it has been shown to affect specific inflammatory pathways, which were previously shown to be dysregulated by experimental sleep restriction or sleep disturbances.”
