Sleep & Women: Rheumatoid Arthritis

A study (#1007) that will be presented later this morning as a poster indicates that women with rheumatoid arthritis report poor sleep quality.

The study involved 133 women with RA; their average age was 56 years and they had RA for an average of almost 15 years.

Results show that 71 percent of the women had poor self-reported sleep quality. Pain, depression and poor adherence to RA medications also contributed to impaired sleep.

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine reports that many medical and neurological disorders may give rise to chronic insomnia. Disorders that cause pain, breathing problems, limited mobility, and central nervous system (CNS) symptoms are the major ailments that cause difficulty initiating and maintaining sleep. Find more about insomnia due to medical condition on SleepEducation.com.

You can download the SLEEP 2009 abstract supplement as an 11 MB file in PDF format.