Migraine may disturb sleep perception during sleep onset: a retrospective data analysis

As sleep latency is an important factor in the diagnosis of many disorders, it is important to know whether the patient's self-reported evaluation of sleep latency corresponds with an objectively measured evaluation. Some studies indicate that patients usually overestimate their sleep latency. We sought to determine how comorbidities affect the patient's ability to assess their sleep latency.

This was a retrospective study of 240 patients who had a polysomnography recorded at our sleep unit or at home in 2017-2020. Data on comorbidities were collected from hospital records.

Mean objective sleep latency (29.5 minutes, standard deviation [SD] 35.5) was significantly lower than self-reported sleep (37.4 minutes, SD 41.6) (P < .001). The patients who overestimated their sleep latency had higher mean apnea-hypopnea index (18.8 events/h, SD 21.6, vs 13.4 events/h, SD 12.8; P = .04) and higher mean sleep efficiency (81.7%, SD 13.6%, vs 75.2%, SD 13.9%; P = .004) than those who underestimated their sleep latency. There were significantly more patients with migraine in the overestimation group than in the underestimation group (20/159 patients vs 3/81 patients; P = .035). This difference was not observed in patients with headache without migraine (P = 1.000).

We hypothesize that migraine is markedly associated with overestimation of sleep latency. This overestimation was not observed in patients with other headache types. Further studies are needed to explore the relation between migraine and sleep onset misperception.

Rantanen O, Hollmen M, Bachour A. Migraine may disturb sleep perception during sleep onset: a retrospective data analysis. J Clin Sleep Med. 2022;18(9):2113-2117.