Association Between Sleep Duration And Total WBC Count And Differential Leucocyte Count In Medical Students

Abstract

Insufficient sleep is associated with higher incidence of infections and worse recovery, and more recently with increased risk for non-infectious diseases and low-grade inflammation. The objective of our study is to evaluate the association between sleep duration and variations of white blood cell (WBC) count and differential leucocyte count (DLC) in healthy young medical students. The study was conducted on 100 medical students. A brief history of sleep duration was taken. Total WBC count and   Differential leucocyte count (DLC) was done and the values neutrophil, lymphocyte, eosinophil, monocyte and basophil count was noted. The present cross sectional study showed that there is significant association between short sleep duration and increase in neutrophil count (p< 0.0001) and also increase in total WBC count (p<0.0001).  The present study observed a high association of short sleep duration among medical students of IMS and SUM Hospital and that short sleep duration was significantly associated with increased neutrophil and total WBC count. We should further investigate whether adults adopting a healthy lifestyle with short sleep duration would improve their sleeping habits or not.