Nightly sleep duration, fragmentation and quality and daily risk of migraine

In the study published by Suzanne M. Bertisch et al. and entitled Nighttime Sleep Duration, Fragmentation and Daily Sleep Quality and Risk of Migraine, they attempt to test the hypotheses that insufficient duration, high fragmentation and poor sleep quality are temporarily associated with the onset of migraine on the day immediately following the sleep period (day 0) and the following day (day 1).

This is a prospective cohort study of 98 adults with episodic migraine.

Participants completed twice-daily electronic journals about sleep, headaches, and other health habits, and used wrist actigrams for six weeks.

The participants had an average age of 35.1 ± 12.1 years. Data were collected for 4,406 days, with 870 headaches reported. Sleep duration ≤6.5 hours and poor sleep quality were not associated with migraine on day 0 or day 1. Low efficiency reported by the journal was associated with a 39% greater likelihood of headache on day 1 (odds ratio (OR) 1.39, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.06-1.81). High fragmentation assessed by the actigraph was associated with lower odds of migraine on day 0 (waking up after sleep onset >53 minutes, OR 0.64, 95% CI 0.48-0.86; efficiency ≤88%, OR 0.74, 95% CI 0.56-0.99).

In conclusion they observed that short sleep duration and low sleep quality were not temporarily associated with migraine. Sleep fragmentation, defined by low sleep efficiency, was associated with a greater likelihood of suffering from migraine on the first day.