Sep 04, 2015 03:48 PM EDT By Staff Reporter, UniversityHerald Reporter

New research suggests that high school students lose sleep on school nights following the change to daylight saving time that occurs in March.

Researchers found that this loss of sleep during the school week was associated with a decline in vigilance and cognitive function, which raises safety concerns for teen drivers.

"For many years now, sleep researchers have been concerned about sleep deprivation in adolescents," Dr. Ana Krieger,  principal investigator of the study and medical director of the Weill Cornell Center for Sleep Medicine at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, said in a statement. "This study unveils a potential additional factor that may further restrict their sleep in the early spring."

For the study, collected and analyzed data from 35 high school students with a mean age of 17 years old. Nightly sleep duration was measured at home by actigraphy during the weeks prior to and after the change to daylight saving time. Participants also completed a sleep diary to report subjective sleep measures. Measurements of daytime sleepiness and vigilance were collected using the Karolinska Sleepiness Scale (KSS) and the Psychomotor Vigilance Test (PVT).

Results show that the average objectively measured sleep duration on the weeknights after the spring time change declined to 7 hours, 19 minutes, which reflects a mean loss of 32 minutes per night compared with the school week prior to the implementation of daylight saving time. Average cumulative sleep loss on weeknights following the time change was 2 hours, 42 minutes. During school days after the time change, students also displayed increased sleepiness and a decline in psychomotor vigilance, including longer reaction times and increased lapses of attention.

This is the first study to quantify the detrimental effects of daylight saving time implementation using objective measurements of sleep duration and vigilance in students attending high school.

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends that adolescents get a little more than nine hours of nightly sleep for optimal health and daytime alertness during the critical transition from childhood to adulthood.

The findings are detailed in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine.

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