Evidence map›Paper›PMID 32366650›Full record

ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2020

Human sleep consolidates allergic responses conditioned to the environmental context of an allergen exposure.

Luciana Besedovsky, Mona Benischke, Jörg Fischer, Amir S Yazdi, Jan Born

Open access · bronzeAbstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
4citing papers in PubMed
0.3field-weighted citation impact, top 45% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

4 citing papers in PubMed, 5 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. Indoor allergen exposure in relation to sleep health among US adults.The journal of allergy and clinical immunology. Global · 2025
    Article
  2. Review
  3. Measuring human context fear conditioning and retention after consolidation.Learning & memory (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.) · 2023
    Article
  4. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

5 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.

Luciana BesedovskyInstitute of Medical Psychology and Behavioral Neurobiology, University of Tübingen, 72076 Tübingen, Germany; luciana.besedovsky@medizin.uni-tuebingen.de jan.born@uni-tuebingen.de.
Mona BenischkeInstitute of Medical Psychology and Behavioral Neurobiology, University of Tübingen, 72076 Tübingen, Germany.
Jörg FischerDepartment of Dermatology, University of Tübingen, 72076 Tübingen, Germany.
Amir S YazdiDepartment of Dermatology, University of Tübingen, 72076 Tübingen, Germany.
Jan BornInstitute of Medical Psychology and Behavioral Neurobiology, University of Tübingen, 72076 Tübingen, Germany; luciana.besedovsky@medizin.uni-tuebingen.de jan.born@uni-tuebingen.de.
University of Tübingen · DEHarvard University · USRWTH Aachen University · DE

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Allergies are highly prevalent, and allergic responses can be triggered even in the absence of allergens due to Pavlovian conditioning to a specific cue. Here we show in humans suffering from allergic rhinitis that merely reencountering the environmental context in which an allergen was administered a week earlier is sufficient to trigger an allergic response-but only if participants had slept after allergen exposure. This context-conditioning effect was entirely absent when participants stayed awake the night after allergen exposure or were tested in a different context. Unlike in context conditioning, cue conditioning (to an odor stimulus) occurred independently of sleep, a differential pattern that is likewise observed for conditioning in the behavioral domain. Our findings provide evidence that allergic responses can be conditioned to contextual information alone, even after only a single-trial conditioning procedure, and that sleep is necessary to consolidate this rapidly acquired maladaptive response. The results unravel a mechanism that could explain part of the strong psychological impact on allergic responses.

Indexed as

AdultAllergensConditioning, ClassicalFemaleHumansLearningMalePropylene GlycolRhinitis, AllergicSleepWakefulnessYoung AdultAllergensPropylene Glycolallergic rhinitislearningPavlovian conditioningplacebosleep

Identifiers

PMID32366650
PMCPMC7245114
OpenAlexW3023771734

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY-NC-ND
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.