RESUMEN
Pregnancy is a period of numerous physical and emotional changes in women's lives, including alterations in sleep patterns and worsening of pre-existing sleep disturbances, which possibly lead to impaired postpartum maternal behaviour and mother-infant relationship. The effects of sleep deprivation during pregnancy in maternal behaviour have been evaluated in preclinical studies, but have provided inconsistent results. Thus, in the present study, we aimed to evaluate the effects of sleep deprivation during pregnancy on maternal behaviour of animals through a systematic review and meta-analyses. After a two-step selection process, six articles were included, all of them describing rat studies. The most frequently used method of sleep deprivation was rapid eye movement sleep restriction, using the multiple-platform method. Four meta-analyses were performed, none of them presenting significant impact of sleep deprivation on maternal behaviour, failing to reproduce the results observed in previous clinical studies. In conclusion, our results show a lack of translational applicability of animal models to evaluate the effects of sleep deprivation during pregnancy on maternal behaviour.
Asunto(s)
Privación de Sueño , Trastornos del Sueño-Vigilia , Animales , Femenino , Humanos , Conducta Materna , Madres , Periodo Posparto , Embarazo , RatasRESUMEN
OBJECTIVE: Because of the relevance for the research on sleep deprivation and human behaviour, many preclinical studies have been conducted on aggressive, sexual and maternal behaviours in this field. Considering the available data and the complexity of the factors involved, the most appropriate way to summarise the effects of sleep deprivation on these behaviours is through systematic reviews and meta-analyses. This article describes the protocol for three independent systematic reviews and meta-analyses, evaluating the effects of sleep deprivation on aggressive, sexual and maternal behaviours in animals. SEARCH STRATEGY: A bibliographic search will be performed in four databases: Pubmed, Scopus, Web of Science and Psychinfo, searching for three domains: sleep deprivation (as the intervention), animals (as the population) and behaviour (as the outcome). SCREENING AND ANNOTATION: Titles and abstracts will first be screened, followed by analysis of the full text and data extraction. DATA MANAGEMENT AND REPORTING: SYstematic Review Centre for Laboratory Animal Experimentation 's risk of bias tool will be used to evaluate risk of bias; visual analysis of funnel plots, Egger's regression and trim-and-fill will be employed to evaluate publication bias. Effect sizes will be calculated from the articles by either direct or standardised mean difference, depending on the nature of the data. Overall estimates will then be calculated using a random effects model. Heterogeneity will be assessed using both I2 index and Cochran's Q test. These meta-analyses should be useful to summarise the available data on the relationship between sleep deprivation and behaviour, providing a solid background for future behavioural sleep deprivation experiments, improving their validity.