Assessing Sleep Quality in a Preclinical Model of Low Back Pain Through Novel Noninvasive Methods

Authors

Lydia C. Saltz, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow

First Advisor

Rebecca A. Wachs

Second Advisor

Forrest M. Kievit

Committee Members

Rick Bevins

Date of this Version

5-2025

Document Type

Thesis

Citation

A thesis presented to the faculty of the Graduate College at the University of Nebraska in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of Master in Science

Major: Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering

Under the supervision of Professors Rebecca A. Wachs and Forrest M. Kievit

Lincoln, Nebraska, May 2025

Comments

Copyright 2025, Lydia C. Saltz. Used by permission

Abstract

Chronic low back pain (LBP) has widespread negative impacts on quality of life. Current treatments for chronic LBP fail to provide long-term efficacy and motivate the need to understand key drivers of poor patient outcomes. Mounting evidence indicates that sleep disturbances and chronic LBP have a strong reciprocal relationship. Women may be particularly vulnerable to the negative impacts of the sleep-pain axis, exhibiting greater prevalence in both conditions. However, the relationship between sleep, pain, and sex remains understudied. Preclinical models can be used to parse out characteristic sleep features that degrade with pain, which can be further broken out by sex. However, the gold standard of sleep measurement in rodents is invasive and requires expert personnel. This work assesses the translation of a novel noninvasive rodent sleep measurement system in Sprague Dawley rats to look at the temporal association between pain-like progression and sleep changes in both sexes of a preclinical LBP model. Future work will leverage this relationship to enhance sleep quality and potentially improve pain outcomes.

Advisors: Rebecca A. Wachs and Forrest M. Kievit