The aim of the European Journal of Rheumatology is to cover various aspects of rheumatology for its readers, encompassing the spectrum of diseases with arthritis, musculoskeletal conditions, autoinflammatory diseases, connective tissue disorders, osteoporosis, translational research, the latest therapies and treatment programs. European Journal of Rheumatology publishes original articles, invited reviews, case based reviews, letters to the editor and images in rheumatology. The publication language of the journal is English. Accepted manuscripts are copy-edited for grammar, punctuation, and format. Once the publication process of a manuscript is completed, it is published online on the journal's webpage as an aheadof-print publication before it is included in its scheduled issue. A PDF proof of the accepted manuscript is sent to the corresponding author and their publication approval is requested within 2 days of their receipt of the proof.
We present a commentary in order to reflect about the use of GABA agonists in clinical practice to treat sleep disorders. Noticing that drugs like GABA agonists are used frequently as alternatives in patients with sleep disturbances and respiratory problems as well as in fibromyalgia patients where is also common to see respiratory disorders with truly few objectified tests on respiratory parameters, we believe more studies must be done in the matter and will like to publish the article in the journal to raise awareness and make clinical professionals reflect about the use of polysomnography for such purpose. The fact that GABA agonists can cause an increase of the apnea-hypopnea index as it is recently being discussed is also important to be aware of. We also highlight the fact that it is worth studying if this drugs could cause obstructive sleep apnea by themselves and also that sleep disturbances must be studied and looked at before attributing them to psychiatric causes.
CommentaryIn clinical psychiatry it is usual to daily encounter patients that suffer from insomnia that demand hypnotic medication. It's also common for our patients to have serious respiratory problems, due to nicotine dependence among other factors that contraindicate the use of hypnotic medications or benzodiazepines. It is also a common practice in clinical rheumatology to use neuroleptic and hypnotic medication to aid pain in fibromyalgia patients where it is frequent to see obesity and associated obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). Under these situations it is a common practice to use alternative drugs like GABA agonists such as pregabalin or gabapentin.As clinical professionals we have found that few studies truly focus on how to increase sleep quality in patients with fibromyalgia. This is important to look at since a relation can be made between the patient's pain and poor quality of sleep and not many studies have been done with objective tests [1]. GABA agonists are a common management strategy used in fibromyalgia inspired by such theory. It has recently been found though that the use of 300 mg daily of gabapentin in healthy adult men increases the risk of OSA due to raises in the apnea-hypopnea index (AHI) and oxygen desaturation index (ODI) seen by polysomnography [2]. It is also evidenced that these negative effects during sleep are also superior to the ones seen in studies with flurazepam [3] and antipsychotic medications [4].Despite this, there are other studies that recognize the beneficial effect of gabapentin in insomnia and fibromyalgia [5][6][7] without reporting significant adverse effects, yet these studies did not perform a polysomnography. This could be quite troublesome since it is common to see respiratory problems during sleep in fibromyalgia patients [8,9]. It´s why we believe that it is convenient to confirm the beneficial effects of sleep medications with complementary tests that objectify not only their benefit but also the possible adverse effects that could have repercussions in sleep and other paramete...
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