Musculosketal symptoms and non-REM sleep disturbance in patients with "fibrositis syndrome" and healthy subjects
Two pages on PainSci cite Moldofsky 1975: 1. The Complete Guide to Trigger Points & Myofascial Pain 2. Insomnia Until it Hurts
PainSci commentary on Moldofsky 1975: ?This page is one of thousands in the PainScience.com bibliography. It is not a general article: it is focused on a single scientific paper, and it may provide only just enough context for the summary to make sense. Links to other papers and more general information are provided wherever possible.
From the abstract: “In the healthy subjects stage 4 deprivation was accompanied by the temporary appearance of muscoloskeletal and mood symptoms comparable to the symptoms seen chronically in the patients.”
original abstract †Abstracts here may not perfectly match originals, for a variety of technical and practical reasons. Some abstacts are truncated for my purposes here, if they are particularly long-winded and unhelpful. I occasionally add clarifying notes. And I make some minor corrections.
In sleep studies of (a) patients with the "fibrositis syndrome" and (b) healthy subjects undergoing stage 4 sleep deprivation, we observed in both groups the anomalous presence of alpha-rhythms in the non-rapid-eye-movement (NREM) sleep EEG. This phenomenon has been termed alpha-delta sleep. In the healthy subjects stage 4 deprivation was accompanied by the temporary appearance of muscoloskeletal and mood symptoms comparable to the symptoms seen chronically in the patients. It is suggested that the external arousing stimulus, which induced alpha-delta sleep in the subjects, is paralleled in the patients by an internal arousing mechanism. Such a mechanism, acting in competition with the NREM sleep system, would impair the presumed restorative function of NREM sleep and lead to the development of symptoms. It is proposed that the "fibrositis" symptom complex be considered a "non-restorative sleep syndrome". Evidence froms presented in support of the hypothesis that a disorder of serotonin metabolism serves as a basis for both the EEG sleep disturbance and the symptoms.
This page is part of the PainScience BIBLIOGRAPHY, which contains plain language summaries of thousands of scientific papers & others sources. It’s like a highly specialized blog. A few highlights:
- Classical Conditioning Fails to Elicit Allodynia in an Experimental Study with Healthy Humans. Madden 2017 Pain Med.
- Topical glyceryl trinitrate (GTN) and eccentric exercises in the treatment of mid-portion achilles tendinopathy (the NEAT trial): a randomised double-blind placebo-controlled trial. Kirwan 2024 Br J Sports Med.
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- Cannabidiol (CBD) products for pain: ineffective, expensive, and with potential harms. Moore 2023 J Pain.