Sleep During Pandemic Times: Summary of Findings and Future Outlook Through the Lens of the International COVID Sleep Study (ICOSS), 2025, Bjorvatn+

Sleep During Pandemic Times: Summary of Findings and Future Outlook Through the Lens of the International COVID Sleep Study (ICOSS)

Bjørn Bjorvatn, Ilona Merikanto, Frances Chung, Brigitte Holzinger, Charles M. Morin, Thomas Penzel, Luigi De Gennaro, Yves Dauvilliers, Yun Kwok Wing, Christian Benedict, Pei Xue, Catia Reis, Maria Korman, Anne-Marie Landtblom, Kentaro Matsui, Harald Hrubos-Strøm, Sérgio Mota-Rolim, Michael R. Nadorff, Linor Berezin, Tomi Sarkanen, Yaping Liu, Serena Scarpelli, Luiz E. M. Brandao, Jonathan Cedernaes, Eirin C. Fränkl, Eemil Partinen, Courtney J. Bolstad, Giuseppe Plazzi, Markku Partinen, Colin A. Espie

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Abstract
To study the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on sleep and circadian rhythms—two fundamental pillars for health—the collaboration International COVID-19 Sleep Study (ICOSS) was established. The present overview comprehensively discusses the findings from this collaboration.

Involving sleep researchers across the globe, ICOSS used a harmonised questionnaire to cover changes in sleep and sleep disorders, as well as physical and mental health. Two survey waves were conducted, one in 2020 and another one in 2021.

In ICOSS-1, a total of 26,539 people from 14 countries across four continents (Europe, Asia, North and South America) participated. In ICOSS-2, two more countries joined ICOSS, and 15,813 people participated. The focus in ICOSS-2 was on Long COVID. Participants accessed the widely disseminated online surveys in their native language.

In the 20 papers published so far, the surveys have uncovered several novel findings, including how the pandemic impacted sleep patterns, the prevalence of sleep disorders, chronotype-based differences and sleep-immune system interactions.

To the best of our knowledge, there is no other large-scale multinational study targeting the general population investigating the role of sleep and sleep disorders alongside a variety of psychological, biological, social and economic factors during the recent COVID-19 pandemic.

Link (Journal of Sleep Research) [Paywall]

 

I don't know why this particular study rings it louder, but seeing stuff like this and more and more it seems like medicine has peaked some time ago, outside of technology has probably peaked decades ago and is just mostly puttering around mostly doing pointless busywork, trying to revive the glory of days long over.

Not that such a study is useless. It would be great knowing more about, but this isn't it. It's just that with the tools and societies we have, what's left can either be done entirely in labs, or simply isn't feasible. Probably happened at least 30 years ago.

Good thing lots can be done in labs and technology, but everything else has that "peaked in high school, which was a loooong time ago" feel to it. It's not just "Imagine a world"-based medicine either, that's just the worst offender.

But that mostly means that if it doesn't involve biological samples, it really seems to be all for nothing, just shuffling magnets and electrons around, where there used to be papers. Medicine has hit a wall made of human. Not humans, human nature itself.