You are currently viewing the summary.
View Full TextLog in to view the full text
AAAS login provides access to Science for AAAS members, and access to other journals in the Science family to users who have purchased individual subscriptions.
More options
Download and print this article for your personal scholarly, research, and educational use.
Buy a single issue of Science for just $15 USD.
Summary
We are all familiar with the sleepiness experienced during sickness. What is less often appreciated is that this increased need for sleep is caused by the release of signaling molecules by our own immune and nervous systems, and not by the infectious agents themselves (1). Indeed, for the spread of a virus or a bacterium, it would be much better if we were out and about when sick, instead of sleeping. On page 509 of this issue, Toda et al. (2) reveal another facet of the interplay between sleep and immunity by identifying NEMURI (NUR), an antimicrobial peptide (AMP) produced by the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster that also has sleep-promoting properties. Because humans synthesize more than 100 different AMPs (3), this work could have implications for interactions between sleep and immunity during human disease.
This is an article distributed under the terms of the Science Journals Default License.
