The headache-sleep study:: Sleep and pain thresholds in healthy controls and patients with migraine and tension type headache
Abstract
Background
Headache can be relieved or released during sleep, but there are few polysomnograpic (PSG) studies on headache patients. Our aim was to evaluate subjective and objective sleep, affective symptoms and pain thresholds (PT) in patients with tension type headache (TTH) and migraine and healthy controls.
Methods
All results are based on a blinded study comparing data in headache patients and controls regarding polysomnography, measurements of PT, data from headache and sleep diaries and questionnaires. We included 20 patients with TTH, 50 migraineurs and 34 healthy controls. Migraineurs who had their sleep recording more than two days from an attack were classified as interictal (n=33) while those registered 2 days or less from an attack were classified as either preictal (n=9) or postictal (n=8). Migraineurs with attack onset mainly during night or by awakenings was classified as sleep related migraine (SM) and compared to migraineurs without a preference for nightly attacks (non-sleep related migraine (NSM)). TTH patients were classified either as episodic TTH (ETTH) or chronic (CTTH) if headache days per month respectively were <15 or ≥15.
Results
All headache groups had more anxiety symptoms, more subjective sleep disturbances than controls, but sleep diaries revealed no sleep time differences. Migraineurs recorded in the preictal phase had shorter latency to sleep onset than migraineurs registered in the interictal phase. Both TTH and NSM patients had findings consistent with foregoing sleep deprivation i.e. more slow wave sleep in PSG, more frequent subjective daytime tiredness and a tendency to lower PT than healthy controls. SM patients had findings consistent with slightly reduced sleep quality in PSG, but not increased frequency of daytime tiredness or reduced PT.
Conclusions
Based on data in this thesis headache patients with attack onset during daytime may need more sleep than healthy controls. Subjects with SM had findings indicating slightly disturbed sleep. However, since no specific clinically relevant disturbing factor was detected, an increased sensitivity to slight subclinical sleep disturbances might be characteristic for patients with headache onset during sleep.
Has parts
Paper 1: Engstrøm, Morten; Hagen, Knut; Bjørk, Marte Helene; Stovner, Lars Jacob; Gravdahl, Gøril Bruvik; Stjern, Marit; Sand, Trond. Sleep quality, arousal and pain thresholds in migraineurs: a blinded controlled polysomnographic study. The Journal of Headache and Pain 2013 ;Volum 14. http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1129-2377-14-12 © 2013 Engstrøm et al.; licensee Springer. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly citedPaper 2: Engstrøm, Morten; Hagen, Knut; Bjørk, Marte Helene; Gravdahl, Gøril Bruvik; Sand, Trond. Sleep-related and non-sleep-related migraine: interictal sleep quality, arousals and pain thresholds. The Journal of Headache and Pain 2013 ;Volum 14.(68) http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1129-2377-14-68 © 2013 Engstrøm et al.; licensee Springer. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Paper 3: Engstrøm, Morten; Hagen, Knut; Bjørk, Marte Helene; Stovner, Lars Jacob; Stjern, Marit; Sand, Trond. Sleep quality, arousal and pain thresholds in tension-type headache: A blinded controlled polysomnographic study. Cephalalgia 2014 ;Volum 34.(6) s. 455-463 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0333102413515339 Reprinted with permission