Migraines In Women May Lead To Brain Damage

By Margarita Nahapetyan

Women who experience migraine headaches with aura (sensory disturbances, such as with vision, balance or speech) are more likely to develop damage to a part of the brain important to coordination and the senses, scientists have found.

Researchers say the results of their study add to a growing number of previous research that suggest migraines may be more than a transient condition and may cause long-term damage in the form of cell death and lesions in the brain over time.

Migraine is a common neurovascular disorder that affects approximately 11 per cent of adults. The condition is more common in women than men. Nearly 30 per cent of migraine sufferers experience neurological aura symptoms before headache onset (migraine with aura).

Migraine has always been considered to be an episodic condition with no further consequences. However, the latest evidence suggests that migraine attacks may be linked to brain lesions identified on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), in particular in the cerebellum, according to background information in the article.

A study principal investigators, Dr. Lenore Launer, chief of neuroepidemiology at the U.S. National Institute on Aging, and Dr. Ann I. Scher, Ph.D., of Uniformed Services University, Bethesda, Md., in collaboration with their colleagues from the Iceland and the Netherlands, examined a group of 4,689 male and female residents of Iceland, and followed them starting in 1967, when they were middle-aged (average age, 51 years old; range, 33-65 years), and ending between 2002 and 2006, when all the volunteers underwent brain MRIs.

The results showed that there were "infarct-like" brain lesions in 39 per cent of the men and 25 per cent of the female participants. The lesions were very small areas of brain tissue damage, Dr. Launer said - some as small as a pinhead. The researchers wrote that they cannot explain exactly what causes the lesions.

The study also found that migraine with aura was observed in 361 participants. In this group, 23 per cent of the women developed brain lesions, when compared with 14.5 per cent of women without headaches. After accounting for age, gender and follow-up time, the experts came to the conclusion that women who experienced migraines along with aura, had almost doubled risk of developing brain lesions at a later time.

No such association was found in male participants. Researchers said that this could be a chance finding because the study did not involve enough male participants with auras, or there could be some specific factor that happens in women who experience migraines with auras.

The investigators said that further long-term studies are required in order to better determine the link between migraine with aura and brain lesions and establish what is the mechanism behind this link. "This study raises a lot of questions," said Dr. Bruce Silverman, a neurologist at Providence Hospital and Medical Center in Southfield, Michigan. Dr. Silverman added that in his opinion, there is no doubt that these brain lesions affect the function of the brain to some extent, and the more you have, the more chance it could be clinically relevant.

If you suffer from migraine, it is critical that you seek attention and care for that, Silverman stressed. There is nothing good just suffering in silence, as this will lead to greater harm and cause pathologic changes in the brain. "Earlier treatment of migraine is important as a quality-of-life issue, but it may also have long-term benefit, maybe causing less of an anatomical effect," Silverman said.

The study is published online in the 24 June issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.