brain lesions Archives - Headache and Migraine News

18 September 2013

Does Migraine Change Your Brain?

A new meta-study confirms that – yes – migraine does seem to change your brain.

This study was making the news rounds late last month. I didn’t comment on it right away, because in a sense it isn’t really news. A “meta-study” is basically a review of previous studies, and we’ve shared much of the information from those studies here before.

Yes, those with migraine disease seem to have different brains – some of the differences are likely from birth, but others may come as a result of migraine itself.

It’s a little tricky to confirm cause and effect here, but this study is successfully drawing more attention to the connection and hopefully will lead to more study in the future.

Many of the statistics won’t mean a lot to the layperson, but let’s take as an example “white matter lesions”. Migraine with aura increased the risk of white matter lesions in the brain by 68%. Migraine without aura increased the risk by 34%.

The study authors summarize this way:

The present review suggests that migraine may be a risk factor for structural changes in the brain.

In comparison with non-migraine controls, migraineurs have more WMAs (white matter abnormalities), ILLs (infarct-like lesions), and volumetric changes in GM (grey matter) and WM (white matter) regions.

All this may sound startling, but most doctors will tell you it’s not something to worry about in most cases. You basically could have an increased risk for something that most other people have to some extent anyway. For example, decreased brain volume is a sign of aging. Maybe your brain is aging slightly faster than someone else’s. Slightly.

However, although one of these things may not be reason to worry, we are getting a bigger picture – that migraine could be doing some long term damage to the brain. How does that impact what treatments work? Could it increase your risk for stroke? Should that change the medication you’re prescribed?

So we’re just confirming what we already knew. Yes, migraine is serious. Yes, it may do long term damage. It’s probably not going to significantly shorten your life, but you should be treating it and not ignoring it.

And remember, there are probably other reasons why migraine is dangerous – reasons that are much more important. The impact of pain on your body. The disabling impact of migraine – loss of time with family, loss of income. Comorbid disorders.

So do look for good treatment, do take migraine seriously. But don’t let these news headlines lead you to panic.

Check out Beyond the hype â€“ migraine and brain lesions

Back to brain lesions

James Discoveries & Stats 0

There has been concern over the past few years about the link between migraine and brain lesions. I wrote about the study back in early 2004 that demonstrated that people with migraine with aura had some damage to brain tissue, known as lesions. This is not uncommon damage, but the fact that there were more lesions in migraineurs was cause for concern. It may begin to explain the link between migraine and some other problems such as stroke. It may also indicate that migraine causes some kind of cumulative damage.

A recent study reported on by Dr. Todd Rozen in the June issue of Cephalalgia tells a more positive story. Brain lesions shown in one MRI scan were completely gone 16 days later. This is only one case, of course, but it’s encouraging.

Brain lesions are normal and not usually a cause for concern. However, there are still a lot of questions – why do those with migraine with aura have more? And even if they are benign, that doesn’t discount other evidence that damage from migraine may be cumulative – it may cause damage over time.

Thanks to Dr Alexander Mauskop of the New York Headache Center for pointing out this study. Dr Mauskop emailed me a few days ago to tell me about his new blog, which I will shortly add to our headache/migraine blog aggregator. We know Dr Mauskop from his book, a favourite of mine and of our visitors.