Highlights
- •Short-term sleep disturbance causes stress, but does not alter basal pain perception.
- •Short-term sleep disturbance prolongs postoperative pain.
- •Opioid receptor reduction in spinal cord and dorsal root ganglion contribute to this prolongation.
Abstract
Chronic sleep disturbance–induced stress is known to increase basal pain sensitivity.
However, most surgical patients frequently report short-term sleep disturbance/deprivation
during the pre- and postoperation periods and have normal pain perception presurgery.
Whether this short-term sleep disturbance affects postsurgical pain is elusive. Here,
we report that pre- or postexposure to rapid eye movement sleep disturbance (REMSD)
for 6 hours daily for 3 consecutive days did not alter basal responses to mechanical,
heat, and cold stimuli, but did delay recovery in incision-induced reductions in paw
withdrawal threshold to mechanical stimulation and paw withdrawal latencies to heat
and cold stimuli on the ipsilateral side of male or female rats. This short-term REMSD
led to stress shown by an increase in swim immobility time, a decrease in sucrose
consumption, and an increase in the level of corticosterone in serum. Blocking this
stress via intrathecal RU38486 or bilateral adrenalectomy abolished REMSD-caused delay
in recovery of incision-induced reductions in behavioral responses to mechanical,
heat, and cold stimuli. Moreover, this short-term REMSD produced significant reductions
in the levels of mu opioid receptor and kappa opioid receptor, but not Kv1.2, in the
ipsilateral L4/5 spinal cord and dorsal root ganglia on day 9 after incision (but not after sham surgery).
Perspective
Our findings show that short-term sleep disturbance either pre- or postsurgery does
not alter basal pain perception, but does exacerbate postsurgical pain hypersensitivity.
The latter may be related to the reductions of mu and kappa opioid receptors in the
spinal cord and dorsal root ganglia caused by REMSD plus incision. Prevention of short-term
sleep disturbance may help recovery from postsurgical pain in patients.
Key words
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: September 02, 2015
Accepted:
July 27,
2015
Received in revised form:
June 29,
2015
Received:
March 29,
2015
Footnotes
P.-K.W., J.C., and H.W. equally contribute to this work.
This work was supported by grants from the NIH (NS072206, HL117684, and DA033390) and the Rita Allen Foundation. The authors do not have any conflicts of interest.
Identification
Copyright
© 2015 American Pain Society. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
