ArticleJournal of pain research2020
Cortical Thickness Mediates the Association Between Self-Reported Pain and Sleep Quality in Community-Dwelling Older Adults.
Article in Journal of pain research, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 8 citations in OpenAlex.
- Medial parietal alpha-frequency transcranial alternating current stimulation for chronic insomnia: a randomized sham-controlled trial.Psychological medicine · 2025Trial
- At the Intersection of Pain and Sleep: a Roadmap for Preclinical Pain Research.Frontiers in pain research (Lausanne, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Protocol for a pilot and feasibility randomized-controlled trial of four weeks of oral γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) intake and its effect on pain and sleep in middle-to-older aged adults.Contemporary clinical trials communications · 2023Article
- Brain-predicted age difference mediates the association between PROMIS sleep impairment, and self-reported pain measure in persons with knee pain.Aging brain · 2023Article
- The Function and Structure of Precuneus Is Associated With Subjective Sleep Quality in Major Depression.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2021Article
- Innovations in Geroscience to enhance mobility in older adults.Experimental gerontology · 2020Review
- Chronic Pain is Associated With Reduced Sympathetic Nervous System Reactivity During Simple and Complex Walking Tasks: Potential Cerebral Mechanisms.Chronic stress (Thousand Oaks, Calif.)Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
10 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
introductionMusculoskeletal pain is prevalent in older adults representing the leading cause of disability in this population. Similarly, nearly half of older adults complain of difficulty sleeping. We aimed to explore the relationship between sleep quality with self-reported musculoskeletal pain, somatosensory and pain thresholds in community-dwelling older adults and further explore brain regions that may contribute to this association.
methodsOlder adults (>60 years old, n=69) from the NEPAL study completed demographic, pain and sleep assessments followed by a quantitative sensory testing battery. A subset (n=49) also underwent a 3T high-resolution, T1-weighted anatomical scan.
resultsPoorer sleep quality using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index was positively associated with self-reported pain measures (all p's >0.05), but not somatosensory and pain thresholds (all p's >0.05). Using a non-parametric threshold-free cluster enhancement (TFCE) approach, worse sleep quality was significantly associated with lower cortical thickness in the precentral, postcentral, precuneus, superior parietal, and lateral occipital regions (TFCE-FWE-corrected at p < 0.05). Further, only postcentral cortical thickness significantly mediated the association between sleep quality and self-reported pain intensity using bootstrapped mediation methods.
conclusionOur findings in older adults are similar to previous studies in younger individuals where sleep is significantly associated with self-reported pain. Specifically, our study implicates brain structure as a significant mediator of this association in aging. Future larger studies are needed to replicate our findings and to further understand if the brain can be a therapeutic target for both improved sleep and pain relief in older individuals.
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