Vasculitis: When Your Body Attacks Your Blood Cells

There have been some reports of patients who appear to have migraine, but who are later diagnosed with some type of vasculitis* (also known as angiitis or arteritis).

MedlinePlus describes vasculitis this way:

Vasculitis is an inflammation of the blood vessels.  It happens when the body’s immune system attacks the blood vessel by mistake.  It can happen because of an infection, a medicine, or another disease.  The cause is often unknown.

It can be very difficult to diagnose, because it’s so rare.  The symptoms can also be varied and sometimes very severe.

For example, some types of vasculitis can involve the brain and spinal cord.  That may mean not only headaches but neurological symptoms like visual aura and scalp tenderness.

If you’re getting headaches or migraine-like attacks from vasculitis, they will be recurring.  Sometimes you may experience stroke-like symptoms.

Of course these could be explained by various types of migraine.  So how do I know if I may have vasculitis?

Remember, vasculitis is an umbrella term which describes a whole host of disorders (including giant cell arteritis, Takayasu’s arteritis, and granulomatosis with polyangiitis (Wegener’s)).  Usually these are diagnosed when doing testing for other diseases, or when it is suspected because of your medical history, or because of your symptoms.  And usually there will be other symptoms, such as fever, swelling of the affected part of the body, fatigue, muscle and joint pain, weight loss, and weakness or numbness.

If you’re experiencing strange or new symptoms, be sure to see your doctor.  And make sure that she knows as much of your medical history as possible (such things as – are you/were you a smoker?  Do you have asthma?  Crohn’s disease?  Any rashes?)

Depending on your symptoms and medical history, your doctor may want to do blood and urine tests, imaging tests, or even a blood vessel biopsy.

In most cases, various types of vasculitis can be treated successfully using medications that fight inflammation, such as prednisolone (Flo-Pred, Pediapred, Orapred).  If you are diagnosed and this type of therapy is successful, you may find your headache/migraine symptoms drastically decreased or even eliminated.

The bad news is that your vasculitis may go into “remission”, but the underlying condition may flare up again, bringing back the same headaches.  If you’ve had vasculitis in the past, check with your doctor to see if a flare-up is behind your headache attacks.

* Usually, vasculitis is a more specific term, whereas vasculopathy can refer to a wider range of conditions.  However, the two terms are sometimes used almost interchangeably.  In this article we’re mainly talking about specific inflammation of blood vessels, or vasculitis.

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