Fibromyalgia & Chronic Pain LIFE Spring 2015, Issue 11 | Page 11

Research Update

Fibromyalgia & Sleep:
New Study Shows
Relationship with
Sleep Apnea
by Rae Marie Gleason, Medical Education
& Research Director for the National
Fibromyalgia & Chronic Pain Association
Summary article in collaboration
with Victor Rosenfeld, MD.
Polysomnography with Quantitative
EEG in Patients with and without
Fibromyalgia, Journal of Clinical
Neurophysiology, November 2014.

Y

ou might want to put some new
thought into changing old sleep
habits. Research has shown that
most people with fibromyalgia (FM)
have a disrupted sleep pattern. It is
important for people with fibromyalgia to know just what kind of
sleep condition they have. A sleep
lab study can identify each person’s
particular problem, which can then
be treated. Published last year in
the Journal of Clinical Neurophysiology, a vital study by Dr. Victor
Rosenfeld, a neurologist and sleep
specialist, gives some interesting
insights into sleep irregularities in
people with fibromyalgia. He found
that 45% of the FM group had obstructive sleep apnea, and significant differences were present in
the qEEG ratio of delta to alpha
frequency power, which was 95%
specific for FM.

I

n 1975 Dr. Harvey Moldofsky, a
psychiatrist at the University of
Toronto was the first person to publish an article on disrupted sleep
patterns in fibromyalgia. In sleep

studies of patients with FM and
healthy subjects undergoing Stage 4
sleep deprivation, his research team
observed in both groups the same
irregular presence of alpha-rhythms
in the non-rapid-eye movement
(NREM) or alpha-delta sleep electroencephalogram (EEG), a common
tool used in sleep research.

D

r. Moldofsky’s healthy control
subjects were actually college
students who agreed to take part
in one of his earlier sleep research
studies. In that study he discovered that after a few nights of deprived sleep caused by continually
waking the students when they entered Stage 4 sleep they reported
symptoms of achiness and muscle soreness. When the students
were able to resume normal sleep
patterns these symptoms disappeared. At the same time another
University of Toronto researcher,
Dr. Hugh Smythe a rheumatologist and fibromyalgia researcher
had shared information with Dr.
Moldofsky regarding the body wide

S pring 20 1 5

tenderness of his patients. Since
the achy symptoms of the healthy
sleep study participants seemed
to mimic the symptoms of FM, the
two doctors decided to test a possible theory that FM was caused by
some type of sleep deprivation.

P

utting Dr. Smythe’s fibromyalgia patients together with Dr.
Moldofsky’s healthy student volunteers gave the two doctors the
opportunity to scrutinize sleep
patterns and resulting symptoms.
In the healthy subjects, Stage 4
deprivation was accompanied by
the temporary appearance of musculoskeletal and mood symptoms
comparable to the symptoms seen
chronically in FM patients. It was
suggested that the external arousing stimulus, which induced alphadelta sleep in the research subjects,
was paralleled in the patients by
an internal arousing mechanism.
The doctors surmised that such a
mechanism, acting in competition
with the NREM sleep system would
impair the presumed restorative

Fibromyalgia & Chronic Pain

Life  11