Do sleep questionnaires and a wearable ring tell the same story for people with chronic pain?

Details

The primary aim was to assess agreement between subjective and objective sleep-quality measures in people with musculoskeletal pain and poor sleep. A secondary aim was to explore how subjective and objective sleep quality related to clinical and experimental pain and its impact on function.

The 33 participants had musculoskeletal pain rated above 5/10 on most days during the preceding three months and poor sleep, defined as a Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) total score above 5. They completed the PSQI and wore an Oura ring, which characterizes sleep stages. Researchers compared PSQI responses for the preceding month with corresponding averaged Oura measures using zero-order correlations. They used partial Pearson correlations, controlling for age and sex, to assess sleep–pain relationships. Significance was set at α < 0.05 with Bonferroni correction.

PSQI responses for total bedtime (p < 0.0005), sleep duration (p < 0.0005), and the PSQI duration component (p < 0.003) correlated significantly with their Oura-derived equivalents. In contrast, Oura measures of sleep latency, efficiency and disturbances did not align with PSQI metrics.

The PSQI total score and sleep latency component were associated with several pain measures. For the Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index pain measure, p = 0.022 for the total score and p = 0.009 for latency. For the McGill Pain Questionnaire, the associations were: total pain, p = 0.026 for the PSQI total and p = 0.008 for latency; neuropathic pain, p = 0.026 and p = 0.011 respectively; continuous pain, p = 0.026 for the PSQI total; intermittent pain, p = 0.026 and p = 0.008 respectively; and affective pain, p = 0.008 for latency. For the Graded Chronic Pain Scale, pain intensity was associated with the PSQI total (p = 0.026) and latency (p = 0.012), while pain interference was associated with latency (p = 0.008).

Oura-derived sleep measures had no significant associations with pain except for sleep latency, which correlated with conditioned pain modulation (p = 0.049). All reported p-values were Bonferroni-corrected.

The researchers described this as a preliminary study of the complementary roles of subjective and objective sleep assessments in older adults with chronic pain. They emphasized combining both approaches to refine sleep evaluation in people with musculoskeletal pain, and called for further research on the feasibility and clinical utility of combining them to understand sleep- and pain-related health outcomes.