// NATURE NEWS — SPAZIO & SCIENZA
Hidden signals in sleep can predict future health
Rachel K. Rowe is in the Department of Integrative Physiology, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, Colorado 80301, USA.
Search author on:
PubMed
Google Scholar
Sleep is essential for health, and disrupted sleep is a common feature of many diseases1. Growing evidence suggests that changes in sleep can emerge before a disease is diagnosed2,3, raising the possibility that sleep contains early signals of future health. Two publications from this year — one in Nature Communications by Bilal et al.4 and one in Nature Medicine by Thapa et al.5 — suggest that sleep data hold substantially more information about health than clinicians and researchers currently extract from them.
Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals
Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Shah, A. S. et al. Am. J. Lifestyle Med. https://doi.org/10.1177/15598276251346752 (2025).
Ramos, A. R., Wheaton, A. G. & Johnson, D. A. Prev. Chronic Dis. 20, E77 (2023).
Article
PubMed
Google Scholar
Mannino, G. S., Baumann, C. R., Opp, M. R. & Rowe, R. K. Neurotrauma Rep. 6, 482–490 (2025).