The headache-sleep study:: Sleep and pain thresholds in healthy controls and patients with migraine and tension type headache

Background Headache can be relieved or released during sleep, but there are few polysomnograpic (PSG) studies on headache patients. Our aim was to evaluate subjective and objective sleep, affective symptoms and pain thresholds (PT) in patients with tension type headache (TTH) and migraine and healthy controls. Methods All results are based on a blinded study comparing data in headache patients and controls regarding polysomnography, measurements of PT, data from headache and sleep diaries and questionnaires. We included 20 patients with TTH, 50 migraineurs and 34 healthy controls. Migraineurs who had their sleep recording more than two days from an attack were classified as interictal (n=33) while those registered 2 days or less from an attack were classified as either preictal (n=9) or postictal (n=8). Migraineurs with attack onset mainly during night or by awakenings was classified as sleep related migraine (SM) and compared to migraineurs without a preference for nightly attacks (non-sleep related migraine (NSM)). TTH patients were classified either as episodic TTH (ETTH) or chronic (CTTH) if headache days per month respectively were