A new study suggests non-restorative sleep is the "strongest, independent predictor of widespread pain" in adults 50 years of age and older.
The risk of developing "muscle, bone and nerve" pain increases with age, a Wiley news release reported. About 80 percent of adults 65 and older experience these types of pain every day.
Widespread pain in multiple areas of the body affects about 15 percent of women and 10 percent of men over the age of 50.
"Anxiety, memory impairment, and poor physical health could also be linked to widespread pain, but new research suggests restless sleep could be a factor as well.
The researchers analyzed data from 4,326 adults over the age of 50 who did not experience widespread pain ("1562 subjects reported no pain and 2764 had some pain"). The team followed up with these patients three years later to see if they had developed widespread pain. They took "pain, psychological and physical health, lifestyle and demographic information" into account.
Nineteen percent (800) of the patients developed new widespread pain over the course of the study. The rate of developing pain was higher in those who reported having "some pain" at the beginning of the study; twenty-five percent (679) of the patients who reported "some pain" and eight percent (121) who reported "no pain" developed widespread pain over the three year follow-up period."
The researchers linked "pain status, anxiety, physical health-related quality of life, cognitive complaint and non-restorative sleep" to widespread pain after adjusting for osteoarthritis (OA). As age increased the risk of developing widespread pain decreased.
"While OA is linked to new onset of widespread pain, our findings also found that poor sleep, cognition, and physical and psychological health may increase pain risk. Combined interventions that treat both site-specific and widespread pain are needed for older adults," John McBeth from the Arthritis Research UK Primary Care Centre, Keele University in Staffordshire, said in the news release.
