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Migraine Associated With Poorer Sleep in Children and Adults
Adults and children with migraine have significantly worse subjective sleep quality and get less rapid eye movement (REM) sleep than their peers without migraine, according to meta-analysis findings published in Neurology.
“We wanted to analyze recent research to get a clearer picture of how migraines affect people’s sleep patterns and the severity of their headaches,” explained researcher Jan Hoffmann, MD, PhD, of King’s College London in the United Kingdom. “That way, clinicians can better support people with migraines and deliver more effective sleep treatments.”
The meta-analysis included 32 studies spanning 10,243 participants. Studies measured subjective sleep quality using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and/or objective sleep architecture using polysomnography in adults and children with migraine and healthy control subjects.
Adults with migraine had higher average PSQI scores than healthy controls. The difference was larger in adults with chronic migraine compared with episodic migraine, according to the study.
On polysomnographic sleep studies, both adults and children with migraine demonstrated a lower REM sleep percentage than control subjects. Children with migraine had less total sleep time, more wake time, and fell asleep faster than children without migraine.
The shortened time for sleep onset may reflect chronic sleep deprivation, researchers speculated.
“These findings highlight that sleep should play an integrated role in migraine treatment,” researchers wrote. “Clinicians should prioritize sleep interventions and consider sleep when prescribing medication.
They recommended more longitudinal empirical studies to enhance the current understanding of the likely complex interplay between migraine and sleep.
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