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Fibromyalgia patients experienced sleep difficulties affecting quality of life
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Sleep difficulty symptoms were significantly greater in patients with fibromyalgia and affected their mental and physical quality of life compared with controls in a recent study.
Researchers used data from a 2009 National Health and Wellness Survey (n=75,000) — a cross-sectional, Internet-based survey representing the US adult population — to study sleep difficulty symptoms among patients with fibromyalgia (FM; n=2,196) and matched controls (n=2,194). Propensity-score matching was used. Regression modeling was used to assess the relationship between the number of sleep difficulty symptoms and health-related quality of life (HRQoL, using Short Form-12, version 2).
Prevalence of sleep difficulty symptoms, including difficulty falling asleep, difficulty staying asleep, waking too early and insomnia, was significantly higher in patients with FM compared with controls. Among FM patients, 11.2% reported no sleep difficulty symptoms, 25.7% reported one symptom and 63.05% indicated two or more symptoms. Compared with patients without symptoms, patients who had reported one or two symptoms also reported significantly worse HRQoL and domain scores (P<.05). Patients with FM and controls had a significantly different relationship between sleep difficulty symptoms and HRQoL, “suggesting a uniqueness of the burden of sleep difficulties within the FM population,” the researchers said.
“Sleep difficulties were found to have significant and clinically meaningful deleterious effects on HRQoL among the FM population,” the researchers concluded. “Effective treatment of sleep difficulties may improve HRQoL among the FM population. … greater emphasis in the treatment of sleep difficulty symptoms among the FM population may be warranted.”
Disclosure: See the study for a full list of relevant disclosures.
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