Lack of sleep may lead to migraine attacks: Study

The findings are published in the journal Brain Communications.

Sleep disorders are commonly reported in people with migraine. Patients with migraines commonly experience sleep disturbances, including trouble falling or staying asleep, poor sleep quality, excessive daytime sleepiness, and waking up. Chronic migraine sufferers often report worse sleep quality, increased fatigue, and shorter sleep duration.

“It has been recognized for quite a long time that there is a relationship between sleep and migraine. The way it has been investigated in the past has been through patient-reported information, which is subjective. We quantitatively measured sleep in preclinical models and found that migraine-like pain does not influence sleep, but if you have disrupted sleep, your chances of having a migraine attack if you're a migraine patient are much higher.” said principal investigator Frank Porreca, PhD, research director for the Comprehensive Center for Pain & Addiction and professor of pharmacology at the UArizona College of Medicine – Tucson.

Led by Frank Porreca, a research team used mouse models to study sleep disruption, as their sleep patterns closely resemble those of humans. They assessed sleep using recordings and visual observations while keeping mice awake with novel objects to explore. The team discovered that sleep-deprived mice were more prone to experiencing migraine-like pain, but migraine-like pain did not disrupt their normal sleep patterns. They also highlighted that sleep deprivation can occur due to various factors, including stress.

The findings suggested that there is a directional causality in the relationship between migraine-like pain and sleep. While the pain phase of migraine does not disrupt sleep, sleep deprivation increases the likelihood of migraine-like pain. It should also be noted that increased sleep could increase the likelihood of migraine attacks.

“Early morning is one of the most common times people experience migraine attacks. Migraine is highly female prevalent – it’s 3 to 1, women to men – and almost all the women are of childbearing age. Many people with migraine probably have children. They wake up with a migraine attack and are immediately stressed. The migraine attack is happening in the worst time of the day for function. Improved sleep is critically important and probably would diminish the frequency of migraine attacks.” concluded Porreca.

Reference: Robson C Lillo Vizin, Caroline M Kopruszinski, Paula M Redman, Hisakatsu Ito, Jill Rau, David W Dodick, Edita Navratilova, Frank Porreca; Journal: Brain Communications; DOI: 10.1093/braincomms/fcae051