After sustaining nerve injuries, mice wake up more often during non-REM sleep – a sign that sleep disruption could help identify nerve pain and the best treatments for it
Nerve pain can cause sleep disturbances
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Pain from nerve injury causes distinct changes in mice’s sleep patterns that aren’t seen with other types of pain. The finding suggests that sleep disturbances could be used to measure and diagnose such neuropathic pain.
Quantifying pain is notoriously difficult. Most methods are subjective, such as asking patients to rate their discomfort on a scale of 1 to 10. In animals, the task is even trickier, further complicating pain research and the development of new treatments. One solution may be looking at sleep disturbances …