Insomnia During COVID-19 Pandemic: Few Points to Ponder

Abstract

1. COVID-19 itself can cause insomnia by varied possible mechanisms including through hypoxia and systemic inflammatory mediators [2]. Hence, active cases can easily be analyzed as a sub-group in such survey-based studies and the prevalence of insomnia in such patients can be estimated and compared with others. However, the study by Hasan et al. [1] showed no relation of insomnia with personal COVID-19 infection among the study subjects. It is possible that these were postCOVID-19 recovered patients who had decreased anxiety and fear due to reassurance by recent asymptomatic infection, uneventful recovery and uncommon risk of reinfection [3]. Thus, the timing of the COVID-19 infection in this cohort of 45 patients can be studied. 2. A simple explanation for a lower prevalence of Insomnia found by Hasan et al. could be that they included only young adult participants (mean age ± standard deviation of 22.24 ± 4.39 years). Decreased mobility, Circadian rhythm changes and depression among elderly commonly lead to insomnia which has been accentuated by COVID-19 by affecting all these factors [4]. The systematic review of 78 studies quoted to have pooled prevalence of insomnia of 35.7% had a age ranging from 7.89 years to 63.9 years [5]. Thus, the study by Hasan et al. is a glimpse of the challenge of insomnia which the young socio-economically productive generation is facing amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the urgent need to recognize it, prevent it and provide early treatment for the same.