African Journal of Biomedical Research · Sep 25, 2026
Sleep Deprivation as a Risk Factor for Chronic Illness
By Borejszo IB, Marczak J, Butkiewicz K et al.
Modern societal pressures have increasingly decoupled human behavior from natural light-dark cycles, making chronic sleep deprivation a prevalent public health concern. Historically viewed as a secondary symptom of underlying medical or psychological issues, sleep deficiency is now recognized as a primary, upstream etiological driver of multi-system chronic pathology.This narrative review examines contemporary scientific literature from 2021 to 2026 to evaluate the mechanistic links between sleep loss and non-communicable diseases, categorizing findings into three primary clinical domains: cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, autoimmune disorders, and neurodegenerative conditions. Across these systems, chronic sleep curtailment triggers persistent sympathetic nervous system hyperactivation, systemic low-grade inflammation, cellular stress cascades, and transcriptional disruptions.In the cardiovascular and metabolic domain, sleep debt impairs hemodynamic resetting, blunts nocturnal blood pressure dipping, promotes atherosclerosis, increases risks for hypertensive heart disease and atrial fibrillation, alters energy balance to drive weight gain, and induces hepatic endoplasmic reticulum stress leading to steatosis. Within the immune system, sleep restriction disrupts self-tolerance, elevates pro-inflammatory cytokines such as interleukin-6 and C-reactive protein, and amplifies pathogenic Th17-cell activity that accelerates autoimmune conditions like systemic lupus erythematosus and uveitis. In the central nervous system, sleep loss impedes glymphatic waste clearance, accelerates amyloid-beta and tau pathology in Alzheimer’s disease models, disrupts memory-related gene transcription, promotes drug-resistant epilepsy via the BMAL1-mTOR-P-glycoprotein axis, and causes permanent late-life neurodegeneration following young-adult sleep loss.Ultimately, insufficient sleep acts as a powerful catalyst for diverse systemic pathologies, highlighting sleep optimization as a vital strategy for chronic disease prevention and clinical management.