THE ESSENTIAL
- Women are two to three times more affected by migraine than men.
- A third of people with this chronic disorder have never consulted and resort to self-medication.
- To date, no effective long-term curative treatment has been marketed.
11 million. This is the number of people affected by a migraine in France. This chronic disease is characterized by recurrent attacks that result in intense headaches. This throbbing headache affects the quality of life of patients, with an impact on their affective relationships and their professional activities. Migraine can be accompanied by digestive or neurological symptoms.
Recently, scientists at the University of Southern California (USA) observed, for the first time, brain changes in adults with migraines. To reach this conclusion, they performed a studythe results of which were presented at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). As part of this work, the researchers wanted to determine the link between this headache and the perivascular spaces. As a reminder, the perivascular spaces, which are filled with fluid, surround the blood vessels in the brain and help evacuate fluids from the organ.
25 adults had an ultra-high resolution MRI scan to scan their brains
To carry out their research, the team recruited 10 people with chronic migraine, 10 adults with episodic migraine without aura, and 5 healthy control patients. The participants, aged between 25 and 60, were asked regarding the duration and severity of the migraine, the symptoms that occurred, the presence of an aura and the side of the headache.
The authors used ultra-high resolution MRI to compare microvascular changes. “Because this scan is able to create images of the brain with much higher resolution and better quality than other types of MRIs, it can be used to demonstrate much smaller changes that occur in brain tissue,” explained Wilson Xu, author of the study, during the congress.
Migraine-related brain changes that ‘have never been reported before’
“In people with chronic migraine and episodic migraine without aura, there are significant changes in the perivascular spaces of a region of the brain called the centrum semiovale. These changes have never been reported before,” Wilson Xu said. According to the results, the number of enlarged perivascular spaces in the centrum semiovale was significantly higher in migraine patients than in volunteers without headache.
According to the scientists, these brain changes might be a sign of a disturbance in the glymphatic system in the brain. The glymphatic system is a waste disposal system that uses the perivascular spaces to help remove soluble proteins and metabolites from the central nervous system. “However, it is not known if these changes affect the development of migraine or if they result from the migraine,” they specified. Now, the researchers hope that more research will be conducted to develop new personalized methods for diagnosing and treating migraine.