ArticleNature and science of sleep2022
Nightmares in People with COVID-19: Did Coronavirus Infect Our Dreams?
Article in Nature and science of sleep, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 26 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
26 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 41 citations in OpenAlex.
- An observatory on changes in dreaming during a pandemic: a living systematic review (part 1).Journal of sleep research · 2023Pooled it
- Lucid Dreaming: Not Just Awareness, but Agency.Journal of sleep research · 2026Article
- The role of artificial intelligence in managing COVID-19 and long COVID: a narrative review.Osong public health and research perspectives · 2026Article
- The association between dream activity and alexithymia during pregnancy: A cross-sectional study in a sample of pregnant women.Journal of sleep research · 2025Article
- Corticosteroid-responsive narcolepsy type II after COVID-19: A relevant differential diagnosis of post-COVID syndrome (a case report).Journal of sleep research · 2025Article
- Neurological, psychological, psychosocial complications of long-COVID and their management.Neurological sciences : official journal of the Italian Neurological Society and of the Italian Society of Clinical Neurophysiology · 2025Review
- In the Arms of Morpheus: Recent Advances in Dreaming and in Other Sleep-Related Metacognitions.Brain sciences · 2024Article
- How COVID-19 Affected Sleep Talking Episodes, Sleep and Dreams?Brain sciences · 2024Article
- The Aftermath of COVID-19: Exploring the Long-Term Effects on Organ Systems.Biomedicines · 2024Review
- Associations between changes in habitual sleep duration and lower self-rated health among COVID-19 survivors: findings from a survey across 16 countries/regions.BMC public health · 2023Article
- Long COVID, the Brain, Nerves, and Cognitive Function.Neurology international · 2023Review
- Sleep disturbance and anxiety symptoms among asymptomatic COVID-19 carriers in Shanghai, China: the mediating role of entrapment and defeat.BMC public health · 2023Article
- Article
- Adolescent Victimization during COVID-19 Lockdowns and Its Influence on Mental Health Problems in Seven Countries: The Mediation Effect of Resilience.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2023Article
- Effects of dysfunctional beliefs about sleep on sleep quality and mental health among patients with COVID-19 treated in Fangcang shelter hospitals.Frontiers in public health · 2023Article
- Longitudinal Findings on the Oneiric Activity Changes Across the Pandemic.Nature and science of sleep · 2023Article
- Converging theories on dreaming: Between Freud, predictive processing, and psychedelic research.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2023Review
- Bad dream frequency predicts mental health needs during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.Journal of affective disorders reports · 2022Article
- What about dreams? State of the art and open questions.Journal of sleep research · 2022Review
- Dreaming during the COVID-19 pandemic: A narrative review.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2022Review
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Authors and funding
22 authors at 19 institutions in 13 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
introductionA growing number of studies have demonstrated that the coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) pandemic has severely affected sleep and dream activity in healthy people. To date, no investigation has examined dream activity specifically in COVID-19 patients.
methodsAs part of the International COVID-19 Sleep Study (ICOSS), we compared 544 COVID-19 participants with 544 matched-controls. A within-subjects comparison between pre-pandemic and pandemic periods computed separately for controls and COVID-19 participants were performed on dream recall and nightmare frequency (DRF; NF). Also, non-parametric comparisons between controls and COVID-19 participants were carried out. Further, we compared psychological measures between the groups collected during pandemic. Ordinal logistic regression to detect the best predictors of NF was performed.
resultsWe found that people reported greater dream activity during the pandemic. Comparisons between controls and COVID-19 participants revealed a) no difference between groups concerning DRF in the pre-pandemic period and during the pandemic; b) no difference between groups concerning nightmare frequency in the pre-pandemic period; and c) COVID-19 participants reported significantly higher NF than controls during pandemic (p = 0.003). Additionally, we showed that a) anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress-disorder (PTSD) symptom scores were higher in COVID-19 participants than controls; and b) quality of life and health as well as wellbeing (WHO-5) scores were significantly higher in controls than COVID-19 participants. Finally, ordinal logistic regression indicates that DRF (p < 0.001), PTSD (p < 0.001), anxiety (p = 0.018), insomnia (p = 0.039), COVID-19 severity (p = 0.014), sleep duration (p = 0.003) and age (p = 0.001) predicted NF. DISCUSSION: Our work shows strong associations between increased nightmares in those reporting having had COVID-19. This suggests that the more that people were affected by COVID-19, the greater the impact upon dream activity and quality of life.
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