We considered our own clusters to better describe the course of the pain during the 13-year follow-up. Many epidemiological studies have found that sleep disturbances increase the risk of further back pain and its development into chronic pain. Sleep problems also predict the need for hospital care, work disability, and pain in body parts other than the back (Eriksen et al. 2001; Hoogendoorn et al. 2001; Haig et al. 2006; Kaila-Kangas et al. 2006; Auvinen et al. 2010). Although there is evidence that pain leads to sleep disturbances, several studies also show that sleep disturbances may cause pain (for example Smith et al. 2009). For example,

in a laboratory setting, it was found that the lack of REM-sleep in particular increased pain sensitivity (Lautenbacher et al. 2006; Roehrs et al. 2006). selleck inhibitor Possible selleckchem mechanisms for the sleep–pain relationship are inflammation, changes in hormonal functions, metabolism and tissue regeneration (Lautenbacher et al. 2006; Roehrs et al. 2006). Sleep deprivation

may also cause an increase in body weight, which in turn can lead to back pain. Sleep deprivation may also disturb the regulation of brain functions and Selleck mTOR inhibitor increase chaos in the brain, affecting pain sensitivity (Irwin et al. 2006; Schmid et al. 2007). In our study, sleep disturbances at baseline strongly predicted chronic or onset of radiating low back pain during the Telomerase 13-year follow-up. The predictive power of sleep disturbances remained high after adjustment for age and further adjustment for physical workload and psychosocial job demands. Musculoskeletal pain in other body parts was a strong co-factor in the model. Since we have no information on the time before baseline, we cannot rule out the possibility that pain in body parts other than the low back may have preceded sleep disturbances. It is also possible that earlier back pain (before the first study) might have preceded sleep disturbances. There might also be reverse causality in the chronic trajectory, because participants in this group

already suffered pain at baseline. Unfortunately, the number of participants did not allow us to study the predictive power of sleep disturbances in the baseline pain-free group or to compare it with that of the group with pain. Furthermore, we wanted to study the courses of pain. In our population, the predictive power of sleep disturbances remained significant after adjustment for shift work. This may be due to the fact that almost all the participants did shift work. It is essential to understand the relationship between sleep disturbances and back pain, because many firefighters have sleep problems. In this sample of Finnish firefighters, 42 % reported sleep disturbances at baseline (and of the drop-outs 49 %).