A research paper published in the US journal Sleep has found that people who sleep six hours or less have more chances of catching cold. The research has stressed on a topic that is already gaining attention, which is importance of sleep for health.

Study’s lead researcher Aric Prather, assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, said health gets affected when one does not get proper sleep. In the study, 164 adults took part.

They underwent two months of health screenings and gave interviews, so the researchers can form baseline for factors like stress, temperament and alcohol and cigarette use. The study researchers tracked the sleep patterns of the participants for seven days.

In order to measure, the researchers have used a watch-like sensor that keeps a track on duration and quality of sleep in night. In the next stage, the researchers administered the cold virus in them through nasal drops and monitored them for a week that whether or not the virus had taken hold.

The researchers reached at a conclusion that those who have slept less than five hours were 4.5 times more likely to catch cold. Prather affirmed, “It did not matter how old people were, their stress levels, their race or education. With all those things taken into account, statistically sleep still carried the day and was an overwhelmingly strong predictor for susceptibility to the cold virus”.