Non-pharmacological interventions improve sleep quality in fibromyalgia patients

Patients with fibromyalgia syndrome commonly experience sleep disorders that can worsen their overall prognosis. Hence, this systematic review and network meta-analysis sought to evaluate and rank community-centered non-pharmacological strategies for fibromyalgia-related sleep issues by analyzing data from randomized controlled trials.

The relevant studies were screened and extracted by two authors independently. The search was conducted across multiple databases, including Web of Science, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), Embase, MEDLINE, PubMed, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Scopus, and Google Scholar. A frequency-based approach was applied to perform network meta-analyses.

Mindfulness-based therapy (MBT) (standardized mean difference [SMD] = -0.84, 95% confidence interval (CI): -1.49 to -0.20) and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) (SMD = -0.54, 95% CI: -1.04 to -0.04) demonstrated remarkable improvements in sleep symptoms for fibromyalgia sufferers when compared to standard care. With a 91.14% probability, MBT emerged as the most effective approach for enhancing sleep, while CBT ranked second at 72.39%. Thus, MBT shows prominent advantages over other approaches and is likely to be the most useful intervention for treating sleep disorders.