The Impact of Sleep Restriction and Simulated Physical Firefighting Work on Acute Inflammatory Stress Responses

This research examined the effect restricted sleep has on wildland firefighters’ cytokine levels during 3 days and 2 nights of simulated physical wildfire suppression work. Firefighters completed multiple days of physical firefighting work separated by either an 8-h (Control condition; n=18) or 4-h (Awake condition; n=17) sleep opportunity each night. Blood samples were collected 4 times a day from which plasma cytokine levels (IL-6, IL-8, IL-1β, TNF-α, IL-4, IL-10) were measured.