Highlights
- •Sleep fragmentation modulates experimental pain perception in young, healthy women.
- •Pain sensitivity in superficial and deep tissues increases after sleep fragmentation.
- •The rate of habituation to ischemia is reduced after sleep fragmentation.
- •The effects of sleep disruption on pain are magnified after a second night of sleep fragmentation.
Abstract
The effect of sleep deprivation on pain sensitivity has typically been studied using
total and partial sleep deprivation protocols. These protocols do not mimic the fragmented
pattern of sleep disruption usually observed in individuals with clinical pain conditions.
Therefore, we conducted a controlled experiment to investigate the effect of sleep
fragmentation on pain perception (deep pain: forearm muscle ischemia, and superficial
pain: graded pin pricks applied to the skin) in 11 healthy young women after 2 consecutive
nights of sleep fragmentation, compared with a normal night of sleep. Compared with
normal sleep, sleep fragmentation resulted in significantly poorer sleep quality,
morning vigilance, and global mood. Pin prick threshold decreased significantly (increased
sensitivity), as did habituation to ischemic muscle pain (increased sensitivity),
over the course of the 2 nights of sleep fragmentation compared with the night of
normal sleep. Sleep fragmentation did not increase the maximum pain intensity reported
during muscle ischemia (no increase in gain), and nor did it increase the number of
spontaneous pains reported by participants. Our data show that sleep fragmentation
in healthy, young, pain-free women increases pain sensitivity in superficial and deep
tissues, indicating a role for sleep disruption, through sleep fragmentation, in modulating
pain perception.
Perspective
Our findings that pain-free, young women develop hyperalgesia to superficial and deep
muscle pain after short-term sleep disruption highlight the need for effective sleep
management strategies in patients with pain. Findings also suggest the possibility
that short-term sleep disruption associated with recurrent acute pain could contribute
to increased risk for future chronic pain conditions.
Key words
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: March 12, 2017
Accepted:
February 26,
2017
Received in revised form:
February 24,
2017
Received:
October 27,
2016
Footnotes
Research funding was provided by the Faculty of Health Sciences' Seed Funding for Research, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa.
The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
Supplementary data accompanying this article are available online at www.jpain.org and www.sciencedirect.com.
Identification
Copyright
© 2017 by the American Pain Society
