Sleep Disorders

Sleep Disordered Breathing in Migraine

Polysomnographic Biomarkers of Sleep Disruption and Sleep Disordered Breathing in Migraine: a Large Matched Case Control Clinical Registry-Based Study (N = 19,070)

REM = rapid eye movement

Cases (migraine) and controls (non-migraine) were examined for patients who underwent polysomnography; adults > 18 years were matched 1:3 on age, sex, race, year of sleep study, and body mass index (BMI). A total of 4783 migraine cases (aged ± 13.3 years, 76.4% Caucasian, body mass index: BMI 33.7 kg/m2) were matched to 14,287 controls. In migraine patients vs those without, total sleep time (TST) was lower (359 [307, 421] minutes vs 363 [306, 432.5] minutes, P = 0.01), percentage of N2 was higher (67.8% [59.6, 75.6] vs 67% [58.4, 74.8], P < 0.001), percentage of REM was lower (16.7% [10, 22] vs 17% [11.1, 22.2], P = 0.012), arousal index was lower (19.6 [12.8, 30.9] vs 22.6 [14.7, 34.9], P < 0.001), and mean oxygen saturation was higher (93.7% ± 2.4 vs 93.3 ± 2.6, P < 0.001). Novel associations of migraine were identified in relation to curtailed sleep and sleep architectural alterations, ie, reduction in N2 and REM sleep and lower arousal index compared with contemporaneously matched controls.