0215 Chronic Variable Sleep Deficiency Impairs Declarative Memory in Women Based on Menstrual Cycle Phase
Document Type
Conference Proceeding
Publication Title
SLEEP
Publication Date
5-2025
Meeting Name
SLEEP 2025
Meeting Date
June 8-11, 2025
Meeting Location
Seattle
Abstract/ Summary
Introduction
Chronic variable sleep deficiency (CVSD) is a pattern of insufficient sleep commonly illustrated by sleep loss on weekdays to accommodate social and occupational demands and “catch-up” recovery sleep on weekends. Women are more vulnerable to acute overnight sleep loss during the follicular phase compared to the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle. We therefore examined the impact of chronic sleep loss on declarative learning and memory by menstrual cycle phase using a CVSD paradigm. Methods
Data from 12 healthy naturally-cycling pre-menopausal women (mean±SEM: 29.95±1.46 years) who completed an ongoing 11-day inpatient study of the neurobehavioral impacts of CVSD were analyzed. Participants were randomized to begin the CVSD protocol at either the follicular (n=8) or luteal phase (n=4) and underwent three cycles of a 10-hour sleep opportunity followed by two consecutive nights of 3 hours sleep, aligned by wake time with a 12-hour recovery sleep before discharge. On the morning after the first 10-hour sleep, participants were trained on a paired-associates task in which they were presented and repeatedly tested on a list of 36 unrelated word-pairs until they achieved a 50%-learning criterion. Participants were asked to recall the same word-pairs the next morning after a 3-hour sleep opportunity. Different sets of word-pairs were used in the first and third CVSD cycles. Results
Women learned a similar number of word-pairs in the follicular and luteal phases in CVSD-cycle 1 (28.87±1.83 vs. 28.00±2.79, p=0.79, respectively) and CVSD-cycle 3 (31.37±0.99 vs. 31.00±2.27, p=0.86, respectively). Women recalled significantly fewer words in CVSD-cycle 3 compared to CVSD-cycle 1 (i.e., 5 nights vs. 1 night of sleep loss, respectively) (85.35% ± 3.14 vs. 95.65% ± 3.19, p=0.04, respectively) during the follicular phase, but had no difference in word-pair recall between CVSD-cycle 3 and CVSD-cycle 1 during the luteal phase (93.02% ± 3.07 vs. 79.62%±11.41, p=0.06, respectively). Conclusion
These results suggest that CVSD differentially impaired declarative memory in the follicular phase compared to the luteal phase. Additional work with a larger sample size is needed to confirm these preliminary findings and examine the impact of CVSD by menstrual cycle phase on other neurobehavioral outcomes. Support (if any)
R01HL162102 (PI: Rahman/St. Hilaire)