A non-invasive imaging test, transcranial Doppler, makes it possible to detect brain changes in patients with chronic migraines, points out a study conducted at a hospital in Barcelona, which may help improve the diagnosis of this disease.
Chronic migraine is one of the most common and disabling diseases in the world, and the World Health Organization (ONS) considers it the leading cause of disability between the ages of 15 and 49.
Neurologist Lola Vilas, from the Hospital Germans Trias i Pujol de Badalona, Barcelona, where the study took place, stressed to the Efe agency that migraine is considered chronic when it occurs at least 15 or more days per month period of three months.
While part of the pathophysiology of migraine is unknown, doctors know that it is generated in several brain structures, including the nuclei of the brain stem, called the periaqueductal gray matter.
This is made up of a series of neurons that, when left unaltered, allow the modulation of pain and other sensory stimuli, according to Lola Vilas.
The neurologist indicated that the correct diagnosis of migraines, especially the chronic ones, is difficult because patients can suffer from non-specific headaches that can lead to a misdiagnosis.
For this reason, finding biomarkers for migraine would help to improve knowledge of the disease, establish diagnosis, and predict progression and response to therapy.
in this way the transcranial Doppler examination, a non-invasive, harmless and easy-to-perform technique, can play an important role, according to a study conducted by the Department of Neuroscience at the German Trias Hospital, which for the first time confirmed the presence of structural changes in the periaqueductal gray matter in patients with chronic migraine.
These abnormalities, according to the neurologists, who published their research in the journal “The Journal of Headache and Pain,” can be detected with an ultrasound examination in the same hospital consultation.
The study, which was conducted over two years, included more than a hundred people who had this ultrasound, more than half of them with chronic and episodic migraines.
The researchers found that compared to healthy volunteers and those with episodic migraine, chronic patients had ultrasound differences in the periaqueductal gray matter.
Lola Vilas emphasized that this is the first study to evaluate the presence of brain changes in patients with migraine using transcranial ultrasound and “has been shown to be useful in the diagnosis of other neurological disorders, as it allows the visualization of deep brain structures “.
“Therefore, expanding and generalizing this test could become a biomarker of migraine chronicity,” said the neurologist.
For Laura Dorado, also a neurologist at Hospital Germans Trias i Pujol, “new tools are needed to reduce the delay in migraine diagnosis, facilitate treatment initiation at earlier stages, and detect predictors of response to treatments “.
Dorado believes that transcranial Doppler may be helpful in the diagnosis and prognosis of migraines.
Source: DN
