Observational studySleep medicine2021
Sleep disturbance and pain in U.S. adults over 50: evidence for reciprocal, longitudinal effects.
Observational study in Sleep medicine, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 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
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed.
- Trial
- Sleep and daily pain intensity among Black and White dementia caregivers.Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2026Article
- Observational
- Dynamic cross-lagged effects between healthy lifestyles and multimorbidity among middle-aged and older adults in China.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Association Between Chronic Pain, Coping Strategies, and Sleep Quality in Rural Chinese Older Adults: A Cross-Sectional Study.Clinical interventions in aging · 2025Observational
- Association of reported sleep disturbances with objectively assessed mild cognitive impairment among adults in the United States.SAGE open medicine · 2025Article
- A machine learning approach to predict postoperative sleep disturbance after total knee arthroplasty: a comparative study of multiple algorithms.Frontiers in medicine · 2025Article
- Sleep Disorders in Connective Tissue Diseases-Coexisting Diseases or Disease Components?Journal of clinical medicine · 2024Review
- Association between sleep problems and functional disability in community-dwelling older adults.BMC geriatrics · 2024Article
- Bidirectional relationship between pain and sleep disturbance in middle-aged and older adults: evidence from the China health and retirement longitudinal study.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2024Article
- Bidirectional links between sleep and pain among heavy-drinking veterans with insomnia.Sleep advances : a journal of the Sleep Research Society · 2024Article
- A common neuronal ensemble in nucleus accumbens regulates pain-like behaviour and sleep.Nature communications · 2023Article
- A Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Study of Pain among Middle-Aged and Older Adults in Thailand.Pain research & management · 2023Article
- Sleep disturbance is associated with neck pain: a 3-year longitudinal study after the Great East Japan Earthquake.BMC musculoskeletal disorders · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
Abstract
objectiveTo examine the relationship between sleep disturbance and pain over a 14-year period.
methodsThis study used data from the 2002-2016 waves of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), an observational study of U.S. adults over age 50 (n = 17,756). Sleep disturbance was measured via four items (assessing difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, and waking up too early as well as restedness) and pain via two items assessing the presence and degree of pain. Analyses consisted of path analysis; more specifically, random intercept cross-lagged panel modeling (RI-CLPM) was used to examine how pain and sleep disturbance predict one another over two-year intervals after accounting for the trait-like nature of both factors.
resultsThere was evidence of reciprocal effects between sleep disturbance and pain across some, but not all, intervals. Moreover, the latent variables representing the trait-like nature of sleep disturbance and pain both showed significant variance (p < 0.001), indicating stable differences between persons in sleep and pain. These trait-like characteristics were strongly associated (β = 0.51, p < 0.001). The findings remained after adjusting the model for baseline age, self-reported health, partner status, depression, years of education, and sex.
conclusionSleep disturbance and pain are stable experiences. Moreover, there was some evidence that sleep disturbance and pain are bidirectionally linked across time among adults over 50, whereby across some intervals deviations in one's typical level of sleep disturbance predicted corresponding deviations in one's typical level of pain and vice versa. Clinically, this comorbidity and potential longitudinal bidirectionality underscore the importance of evidence-based interventions that target both sleep and pain among older individuals. Further studies should replicate these findings by collecting validated and/or objective sleep and pain measures on a more frequent basis.
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