Nightly sleep duration, fragmentation, and quality and daily risk of migraine
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Abstract
Objective To test the hypotheses that insufficient duration, high fragmentation, and poor sleep quality are temporally associated with migraine onset on the day immediately following the sleep period (day 0) and the following day (day 1).
Methods In this prospective cohort study of 98 adults with episodic migraine, participants completed twice-daily electronic diaries on sleep, headaches, and other health habits, and wore wrist actigraphs for 6 weeks. We estimated the incidence of migraine following nights with short sleep duration, high fragmentation, or low quality compared to nights with adequate sleep with conditional logistic regression models stratified by participant and adjusted for caffeine intake, alcohol intake, physical activity, stress, and day of week.
Results Participants were a mean age of 35.1 ± 12.1 years. We collected 4,406 days of data, with 870 headaches reported. Sleep duration ≤6.5 hours and poor sleep quality were not associated with migraine on day 0 or day 1. Diary-reported low efficiency was associated with 39% higher odds of headache on day 1 (odds ratio [OR] 1.39, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.06–1.81). Actigraphic-assessed high fragmentation was associated with lower odds of migraine on day 0 (wake after sleep onset >53 minutes, OR 0.64, 95% CI 0.48–0.86; efficiency ≤88%, OR 0.74, 95% CI 0.56–0.99).
Conclusion Short sleep duration and low sleep quality were not temporally associated with migraine. Sleep fragmentation, defined by low sleep efficiency, was associated with higher odds of migraine on day 1. Further research is needed to understand the clinical and neurobiologic implications of sleep fragmentation and risk of migraine.
Glossary
- BIDMC=
- Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center;
- BWH=
- Brigham and Women's Hospital;
- CI=
- confidence interval;
- OR=
- odds ratio;
- WASO=
- wake after sleep onset
Footnotes
Go to Neurology.org/N for full disclosures. Funding information and disclosures deemed relevant by the authors, if any, are provided at the end of the article.
CME Course: NPub.org/cmelist
- Received March 7, 2019.
- Accepted in final form July 22, 2019.
- © 2019 American Academy of Neurology
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Disputes & Debates: Rapid online correspondence
- Reader response: Nightly sleep duration, fragmentation, and quality and daily risk of migraine
- Alex B. Berezow, Vice President of Scientific Communications, American Council on Science and Health
Submitted January 17, 2020 - Reader response: Nightly sleep duration, fragmentation, and quality and daily risk of migraine
- Vinod K. Gupta, Physician-Medical Director, Migraine-Headache Institution, (New Delhi, India)
Submitted December 26, 2019
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