The relationship between sleep quality and ratio of house size/number of people in chronic migraineurs during Covid-19 lockdown.

Objectives: The COVID-19 pandemic led the governments to introduce a series of restrictive measures referred as “lockdown”. Lockdown repre- sented a revolution for life of many people, it was a stressful condition which forced Italians to stay at home. The present study aimed to evaluate if ratio of house size/number of people (H/P) during first COVID-19 lockdown in Italy influenced sleep quality (SQ) in patients with chronic migraine (CM). Methods: The study was based on an e-mail survey addressed to CM patients of our headache center. We evaluated SQ using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index score (PSQI), the score ranges from 0 to 21, a higher score is associated with a worse condition. H/P was calculated dividing the square meters (sqm) of patients’ house by the number of people living in the house. HP was dichotomized by values ≤ or > 40 sqm per person. Results: A total of ninety-two patients completed the survey. Fifty- eight patients (63%) had a H/P ≤40 sqm per person and they presented a PSQI score of 13,23 ± 6,18. Thirty-four patients (37%) reported a H/P > 40 sqm per person and their PSQI was 9,82 ± 4,58. A statistical difference was found with a p-value = 0,007. Conclusions: H/P was associated with a poor SQ in our patients dur- ing COVID-19 lockdown. No data are present in literature concerning this point and we hypothesize that probably having a small space to share with the other family members during lockdown created more stressful conditions and problems with sleep repercussion.