Sleep deprivation and anxiety in humans and rodents--translational considerations and hypotheses

The effects of acute sleep deprivation on anxiety are the focus of controversy in the literature. While clinical research studies on the effects of sleep deprivation seem to show a consistent increase in acute anxiety, rodent studies have produced inconsistent results, with some experiments pointing to anxiogenesis and others to anxiolysis. Such observations impair the translational applicability of rodent models on the paradigm between sleep deprivation and anxiety. Current studies fail in the very basic principle of biomedical translational research: to provide relevant and reliable knowledge from basic experimental science that can be applied in clinical environments. Possible explanations for the disparity between human and animal studies include the accuracy of both human and rodent research, the ability of current behavioral protocols to truly reflect the anxiety response of rodents to sleep deprivation, and the nature of sleep deprivation-induced anxiety in rodents. Based on these hypotheses, we performed a brief overview of the literature on the relationship between sleep deprivation and anxiety and propose a research agenda that could lead to a better understanding of the reasons for the discrepancies found in the literature and provide more reliable data on the translational relationship between sleep deprivation and anxiety.