Temporal Analysis of Chronic Musculoskeletal Pain and Sleep in Postmenopausal Women

To investigate the temporal association between chronic musculoskeletal pain (CMP) and sleep in women who are postmenopausal in a 10-day actigraphic study. This is a microlongitudinal study in which 52 participants were allocated to 4 groups women who are postmenopausal: control (CTRL, n = 10), chronic musculoskeletal pain (CMP, n = 12), insomnia (INS, n = 15) and chronic musculoskeletal pain+insomnia (CMP+INS, n = 15).

All volunteers underwent a clinical interview and completed questionnaires, used an actigraph, and kept sleep diaries for 10 consecutive days.

Women in the CMP+INS group presented more sleep episodes (mean of 1.02 episodes) and longer sleep latency (8.97 minutes), as well as higher pain intensity during the day compared to the other groups. Sleep duration recorded by actigraphy directly predicted pain intensity the following morning on waking, with a 1-unit increase in pain intensity, for every 6.9 minutes more of sleep. Higher pain intensity at bedtime was a significant predictor of both increased time in bed and sleep duration, meaning that for each 1-unit increase in pain intensity at bedtime, sleep duration increased by an average of 6.7 minutes.

Data showed that the coexistence of insomnia and CMP results in greater pain intensity and alterations in sleep homeostasis. Collectively, the data indicate that there is a bidirectional and directly proportional relationship between sleep duration and pain intensity in women who are postmenopausal with insomnia. This result strongly suggests that both sleep and pain conditions should be targeted in the treatment of women who are postmenopausal.