Pain and sleep disturbances often go hand in hand — more than 30% of the U.S. population lives with pain, and a majority of such individuals also report sleep disorders — but the relationship between the two has remained largely unexplored.
Now researchers at WashU Medicine have developed a new mouse model that mirrors the sleep disruptions experienced by people living with chronic pain—providing a powerful tool to study how the two are biologically linked. Jose Moron-Concepcion, PhD, the Henry E. Mallinckrodt Professor of Anesthesiology; Erik Musiek, MD, PhD, the Charlotte & Paul Hagemann Professor of Neurology; and Khairunisa Ibrahim, PhD, a research instructor in Moron-Concepcion’s lab, found that mice with chronic pain slept more when they would normally be active, echoing the excessive daytime sleepiness often reported by people with chronic pain. Sleep disturbances linked to pain can significantly impair daily functioning, reduce quality of life and increase health-care costs.
The study appeared June 22 in Neuropsychopharmacology and offers a model for future translational research on improving sleep among individuals experiencing chronic pain.