Summary: David Klyne, PhD, from the University of Queensland has received a Research Excellence Award for his work suggesting that poor sleep may contribute to the development and persistence of chronic pain, reversing the conventional belief that pain disrupts sleep. His ongoing research, now moving to clinical trials, will explore how sleep quality impacts pain recovery, aiming to refine sleep treatments as a potential method for preventing chronic pain.
Three Key Takeaways:
- New Perspective on Sleep and Pain: The study challenges the traditional view that pain causes poor sleep, suggesting instead that poor sleep may worsen and maintain chronic pain.
- Clinical Trials to Explore Sleep’s Impact: Klyne’s team will monitor chronic pain patients’ sleep patterns and physiological responses to investigate how different types of sleep influence pain recovery.
- Chronic Pain’s Global Impact: Chronic pain affects at least 20% of the global population, causing more disability than cancer and heart disease combined, and this research could lead to sleep being considered a legitimate treatment option for pain, according to Kylne.
A University of Queensland study investigating the links between sleep and pain could change the way doctors and clinicians treat people with chronic pain.
David Klyne, PhD, from the University of Queensland’s School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences has received a UQ Foundation Research Excellence Award for his work on how sleep influences pain recovery.
“Poor sleep coexists with chronic pain in up to 90% of cases,” Klyne says in a release. “Up until recently it’s been thought pain causes poor sleep, but our research suggests it’s the other way around—that poor sleep worsens and potentially maintains pain.
“For example, if you’re experiencing acute pain caused by injury, we’ve shown how well you recover depends on how well you sleep. Worse sleep primes the nervous and immune systems to enhance pain and potentially drive the development of chronic pain. If we can establish that poor sleep contributes to the development of chronic pain, then we’ll be able to focus on developing and refining sleep treatments for the purpose of preventing chronic pain.
“This work could fundamentally shift the way our health system considers sleep in the context of pain.”
Progressing to Clinical Trials
The award will help progress Klyne’s study to clinical trials, where his team will use head devices to monitor sleep patterns in chronic pain patients, while also conducting blood and saliva tests to look at patients’ hormonal, neural, and immune responses.
“We’ll observe how their nervous and immune systems respond to a period of good sleep and a period of poor disrupted sleep, which will be achieved by participants setting alarms at intermittent times throughout the night,” he says in a release. “We’ll also be examining if and how different sleep patterns—such as deep sleep and light sleep—impact recovery differently. For example, disrupted or loss of deep sleep might influence someone’s recovery far more than loss of light sleep.”
Sleep as a Treatment for Patients With Pain
Klyne says chronic pain affects at least 20% of the world’s population.
“It’s the biggest unresolved health issue of our time, and it causes more disability than cancer and heart disease combined,” he says in a release. “Sleep as a treatment for pain is largely overlooked, but our research is trying to change that. If we can increase our understanding about the relationship between sleep and pain, we can hopefully encourage more clinicians to consider sleep as a legitimate treatment for patients with pain.”
This project is part of Klyne’s work on how lifestyle factors influence pain. His team is currently recruiting for a study to examine how back pain symptoms are influenced by biology, psychology, sociology, behavior, and lifestyle.
Photo caption: David Klyne fits Wolbert van den Hoorn, PhD, with a sleep monitoring device.
Photo credit: University of Queensland
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