AccScience Publishing / JCBP / Online First / DOI: 10.36922/JCBP026140017
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ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE

Analysis and exploration of peripheral T-cell subset characteristics and immune markers in patients with insomnia disorder

Xian Ding1† ,  Xinhua Song2† ,  Guang Wang3 ,  Zihan Gao4 ,  Minjie Lou4 ,  Yike Zhang4 ,  Meiyi Guo4 ,  Zhenghao Cao4 ,  Xin Liu2 ,  Junhua Mei2*
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1 Department of Neurology, School of Medicine, Jianghan University, Wuhan, Hubei
2 Department of Neurology, Wuhan First Hospital, Wuhan, Hubei, China
3 Department of Neurology, School of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Hubei University of Chinese Medicine, Wuhan, Hubei, China
4 Department of Neurology, First Clinical College, Hubei University of Chinese Medicine, Wuhan, Hubei, China
†These authors contributed equally to this work.
JCBP, 026140017 https://doi.org/10.36922/JCBP026140017
Received: 31 March 2026 | Revised: 22 July 2026 | Accepted: 7 August 2026 | Published online: 26 August 2026
© 2026 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
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Abstract

Chronic insomnia is closely associated with immune dysregulation; however, the immunometabolic characteristics of peripheral T-cell subsets and their relationship with sleep architecture remain largely unclear. This study investigated peripheral T-lymphocyte subsets and their immunometabolic characteristics in patients with chronic insomnia and identified immune indicators associated with sleep parameters. A total of 45 patients with chronic insomnia and 30 healthy controls were enrolled. Flow cytometry quantified T-cell subsets and two mitochondrial parameters: mitochondrial mass, reflecting mitochondrial content, and the percentage of cells with low mitochondrial membrane potential. A total of 37 patients underwent polysomnography. Multiple linear regression identified independent predictors after adjustment for age, sex, and anxiety/depression scores, while receiver operating characteristic analyses evaluated predictive performance. Compared with healthy controls, patients with insomnia showed imbalances in 21 of 30 immune indicators (p < 0.05), including increased frequencies of CD4+ CD45RA− CD62L− PD1+ effector memory T (Tem) cells, accompanied by increased mitochondrial mass and the percentage of cells with low mitochondrial membrane potential in this subset. Multivariate regression identified Tem cell percentage as an independent correlate of N1% (β = 0.184, p = 0.014) and Tem cell count as an independent correlate of sleep efficiency (β = −7.47, p = 0.007). Receiver operating characteristic analysis showed that Tem cell count predicted insomnia with an area under the curve of 0.858 (95% confidence interval: 0.761–0.955), a sensitivity of 95.6%, and a specificity of 66.7% at a cutoff of 18.015. Tem cell count may serve as an immunometabolic biomarker for insomnia assessment.

Keywords
Insomnia
Immunometabolism
Biomarker
Mitochondrial parameters
T cell subsets
Funding
This work was supported by the Hubei Province Natural Science Funding (Grant Number: 2025YFC109), the 2025 Municipal Natural Science Foundation (Grant Number: 2025020701020233), and the Hubei Provincial Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine Research Project (Grant Number: ZY2025L039).
Conflict of interest
The authors declare no competing interests.
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Journal of Clinical and Basic Psychosomatics, Electronic ISSN: 2972-4414 Print ISSN: 3060-8562, Published by AccScience Publishing
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