There is a time when we are most likely to get infections, you know?

Do you remember the last time you had any kind of infection? It may not have been very nice, because infections often include pain, fever, malaise, and the need to use medications that often have unpleasant side effects. All of this you already know about infection, but perhaps new is the fact that throughout the day there is a time when we are more likely to get infections.

New research by scientists at Cambridge University has revealed that the functioning of our biological clock affects infectious processes. To reach this conclusion, laboratory mice were infected with the herpes virus at different times of the day.

The results revealed that the virus multiplies tenfold when it reaches the rat organism in the morning compared to other times of day - the animals were in a controlled light environment: they had 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of daylight. hours of darkness.

The biological clock, officially called the circadian rhythm, controls our sleep patterns, body temperature and various aspects of our immune system. In mice that have genetic defects that affect circadian rhythm function, viral reproduction is high regardless of the time of day.

In practice

According to Cambridge University neuroscientist Akhilesh Reddy, the timing of an infection can interfere with how susceptible we are to certain diseases and the viral replication itself, which means that an infection can be more or less severe depending on the time. the day the virus was hosted.

Knowing this can be helpful in relation to influenza vaccination, for example: it is possible that in the future we may have a better time for the vaccine to be given so that it would become even more efficient.

Moreover, these results may be helpful in understanding why people who work different shifts tend to get sicker than those who work regular shifts - the explanation possibly has to do with the fact that because they don't have Regulated sleep schedules, your immune systems are more fragile.