Non-Restorative Sleep Linked to Widespread Pain

Non-restorative sleep was the strongest predictor of new-onset widespread pain in adults over the age of 50, according to a new UK study that will appear in the upcoming issue of Arthritis & Rheumatology.

“Sleep is a modifiable target that could improve outcomes in this patient group,” says study author Ross Wilkie, PhD, of Keele University in Staffordshire, UK. Given these findings, he suggests that assessing patients’ sleep patterns could be help in identifying patients at risk of developing widespread pain.

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Wilkie and his colleagues also found that anxiety, memory impairment, and poor physical health may also increase the risk of developing widespread pain in this patient population. Their prospective study included 4,326 patients, who provided information about pain, psychological status, lifestyle and health behaviors, as well as demographics and clinical factors.

“Reporting musculoskeletal pain was common, with just under half of participants reporting some pain,” Wilkie says. “Of those who were free of widespread pain at baseline, 19% reported new-onset widespread pain at 3-year follow-up.” This included 25% of participants who had reported some pain and 8% who had reported no pain at the start of the study.

Although the researchers haven’t formally identified the mechanism for the link between non-restorative sleep and pain or particular subgroups in which this occurs, Wilkie says both of these questions could be answered in further analysis and studies.  

“We plan to continue working to identify other factors that increase the risk of developing new-onset widespread pain and its impact in older people, and that may offer targets for pain reduction,” he says. “Such mechanisms are likely to be multifactorial, including common factors known to be associated with reporting widespread pain, age-specific social factors that influence pain reporting, and changes in pain processing mechanisms. The role of these psychosocial factors and new-onset widespread pain in older people may be a useful line of future inquiry.”

—Colleen Mullarkey

Reference

McBeth J, Lacey RJ, Wilkie R. Predictors of new-onset widespread pain in older adults: results from a population-based prospective cohort study in the UK. Arthritis Rheumatol. 2014 Mar;66(3):757-67.