Year: 2010
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Many patients with chronic pain complain of sleep problems. However, the \nrelationship between sleep and pain in these patients is still not fully understood. \nExperimental models are used to understand the interaction between pain and \nsleep, but up until now all such models have been of short duration and assessed \ndifferent end-points of sleep disruption. The aim of the study is to develop a \nlonger-acting model to mimic the muscle pain seen in patients with chronic pain, \nassess whether the end-point of sleep disruption is constant over subjects and \nassess whether the disruption is dependent on length of stimulation and/or the \nsleep stage involved. Twelve healthy male subjects participated in the study. They \nwere exposed to multiple hypertonic and isotonic saline infusions, for a duration \nof ten minutes, both while awake and during all stages of sleep. The muscle pain \nintensity and quality during wakefulness were assessed using the Visual Analogue \nScale (VAS) and McGill Pain Questionnaire. Polysomnographic signals were \nrecorded to score sleep changes during all sleep stages. During wakefulness \nhypertonic saline infusions produce significantly greater VAS Scores than \nisotonic saline infusions. Differences between the VAS scores from evening to \nmorning were non-significant, therefore implying that there was no overnight \nhyperalgesia after any of the experimental stimulations. When compared to the \nisotonic saline infusions, the noxious hypertonic saline infusions triggered \nsignificantly more microarousals during REM (67% of subjects); more sleep stage \nshifts in SWS (42% of subjects) and more full arousals during stage 2 (83% of \nsubjects), SWS (67% of subjects) and REM (67% of subjects) sleep. The data \nsuggests that pain during sleep triggers multiple different end-points of sleep disruption during sleep and the specific end-points may be determined by the \nsleep stage involved. The sleep disturbances found in our model of experimental \npain may be similar to those found in patients with chronic muscle pain.
Author: Dyana Siebert
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: National Research Foundation
OpenAlex ID: W2247278739