Musculoskeletal pain during the night and its relationship to sleep quality and poor sleep perception among older adults

Abstract

Background: During the aging process, pain and sleep complaints become increasingly common and constitute two prominent factors affecting the quality of life in older people. In this sense, the relationship between sleep and pain is considered bidirectional. For a complete evaluation of the link between sleep and pain, a combination of subjective and objective evaluation methods can be employed. These measures include polysomnography and questionnaires evaluating self-reported sleep quality and pain complaints. Objective: The objective was to develop a structural equation model that appropriately approaches the link between sleep and musculoskeletal pain. Design: Cross-sectional study based on the dataset from the 2015 São Paulo Epidemiologic Sleep Study (EPISONO). Setting: Sleep lab. Subjects: Individuals aged 60 years or more (n = 152). Methods: We used exploratory factor analysis and structural equation modelling to identify the significant variables from and build the intended model. Results: Structural equation modelling showed that feeling pain during the night was associated with poor sleep perception; however, waking up and feeling pain in the morning was not associated with either poor sleep perception or objective sleep quality. Poor sleep perception factor presented a fit measure of KMO = 0.5. The significant variables of the final model for the objective sleep quality factor were sleep efficiency, total sleep time, and sleep latency. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that feeling pain in the night, but not in the morning, was associated with poor subjective sleep in older adults.