J Sleep Res. 2020;00:e13135. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jsr | 1 of 12 https://doi.org/10.1111/jsr.13135 © 2020 European Sleep Research Society Received: 12 May 2020 | Revised: 4 June 2020 | Accepted: 9 June 2020 DOI: 10.1111/jsr.13135 REVIEW PAPER Effects of sleep modulation during pregnancy in the mother and offspring: Evidences from preclinical research Gabriel Natan Pires 1,2 | Luciana Benedetto 3 | Rene Cortese 4 | David Gozal 4 | Kamalesh K. Gulia 5 | Velayudhan Mohan Kumar 6 | Sergio Tufik 1 | Monica Levy Andersen 1 1 Departamento de Psicobiologia, Universidade Federal de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil 2 Department of Physiological Sciences, Santa Casa de São Paulo School of Medical Sciences, São Paulo, Brazil 3 Departamento de Fisiología, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de la República, Montevideo, Uruguay 4 Department of Child Health and Child Health Research Institute, University of Missouri School of Medicine, Columbia, MO, USA 5 Division of Sleep Research, Biomedical Technology Wing – Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology, Trivandrum, Kerala, India 6 Kerala Chapter (Convenor), National Academy of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India Correspondence Gabriel Natan Pires, Departamento de Psicobiologia, Universidade Federal de São Paulo, Rua Napoleão de Barros, 925, Vila Clementino – SP – 04024-002, São Paulo, Brazil. Email: gnspires@gmail.com; gabriel.pires@ fcmsantacasasp.edu.br Funding information Associação Fundo de Incentivo à Pesquisa; Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior; Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico; Cognitive Science Research Initiative program of the Department of Science and Technology, Grant/Award Number: SR/CSI/110/2012 and SR/ CSRI/102/2014; US National Institutes of Health, Grant/Award Number: HL130984 and HL140548 Abstract Disturbed sleep during gestation may lead to adverse outcomes for both mother and child. Animal research plays an important role in providing insights into this research field by enabling ethical and methodological requirements that are not possible in hu- mans. Here, we present an overview and discuss the main research findings related to the effects of prenatal sleep deprivation in animal models. Using systematic re- view approaches, we retrieved 42 articles dealing with some type of sleep alteration. The most frequent research topics in this context were maternal sleep deprivation, maternal behaviour, offspring behaviour, development of sleep–wake cycles in the offspring, hippocampal neurodevelopment, pregnancy viability, renal physiology, hy- pertension and metabolism. This overview indicates that the number of basic studies in this field is growing, and provides biological plausibility to suggest that sleep dis- turbances might be detrimental to both mother and offspring by promoting increased risk at the behavioural, hormonal, electrophysiological, metabolic and epigenetic lev- els. More studies on the effects of maternal sleep deprivation are needed, in light of their major translational perspective. KEYWORDS gestation, intermittent hypoxia, maternal behaviour, scoping review, sleep deprivation, sleep restriction, systematic review