Sleep could help fight infection: study

Sleep could improve the ability of immune cells in the human body to fight infections, said a recent study

"This finding shows that sleep can potentially improve the effectiveness of effector T-cell responses," the report said.

The researchers said that, compared with the waking state, sleep significantly increased the average intensity of T-cell fluorescence, a type of white blood cell that fights infection in the human body .

"Our results demonstrate that a sleep loss of a few hours is enough to reduce the adhesion capacity of antigen-specific T cells," according to the study published Tuesday in the Journal of Experimental Medicine.

The findings could help develop new therapeutic strategies in order to improve the target capacity of T cells, particularly when they kill tumor cells.