Poor sleep linked to widespread pain

Regularly feeling tired and worn out after a night's sleep was the strongest predictor of also developing widespread pain in a new study of UK adults over the age of 50.

"In older adults widespread pain, that is pain that affects multiple sites in the body, is common and is associated with morbidity and disability including poor mental health and reduced physical functioning," said Ross Wilkie, the study's senior author.

Wilkie is a researcher with the Arthritis Research UK Primary Care Center of Keele University in Staffordshire.

"In this study, reporting musculoskeletal pain was common with just under half of participants reporting some pain and one quarter reporting widespread pain," Wilkie told Reuters Health in an email.

"Non-restorative sleep was the strongest predictor of new onset widespread pain," he said, and "sleep is a modifiable target," so improving it might improve the outcomes of these people, he said.

"In addition to sleep, osteoarthritis, cognitive impairment, anxiety and physical health independently predicted the onset of widespread pain and are important treatment targets," he added.

Widespread pain is the main feature of fibromyalgia, a condition affecting 15 percent of women and 10 percent of men over the age of 50, according to Wilkie and his colleagues, who published their report in the journal Arthritis and Rheumatology.

But the factors that influence who develops widespread pain with age are poorly understood, they write. To investigate, the researchers analyzed data on 4,326 adults from North Staffordshire, England.

All were over age 50 and free of widespread pain at the start of the study, although 2,764 had some localized pain.

Participants were surveyed about their pain, their physical and emotional health and lifestyle factors at the beginning of the study. Then they took the same survey again three years later.

At the follow-up, 19 percent reported new widespread pain, with women more likely to have experienced the onset of widespread pain than men.

When the researchers looked for factors linked to developing widespread pain during the time between surveys, they found that having reported some pain on the original survey, as well as having anxiety, physical health or cognitive problems and osteoarthritis were all predictors.

But regularly having poor, "non-restorative" sleep showed the strongest link, making a person almost twice as likely to experience the onset of widespread pain compared to people without sleep problems.

The study cannot prove that unrestful sleep is either a cause or effect of widespread pain, but more research is needed to understand the relationship, Wilkie and his colleagues write. That may also offer targets for reducing pain.