1 research outputs found
Changes in the hippocampal volume in chronic migraine, episodic migraine, and medication overuse headache patients
Background and purpose – Hippocampi
are the structures located in the medial
depths of both temporal lobes, mainly
responsible for memory, navigation and reg-
ulation of emotions, and activated during the
processing of pain and the modification of
nociceptive stimuli. Chronic pain is thought
to have stress-like detrimental modulatory
effects on the hippocampal neurogenesis,
and adults with chronic pain have been
showed to have lower hippocampal volumes.
The present study aims to show the relation-
ship between headaches and hippocampal
volume by comparing the right, left and
total hippocampal volumes of patients with
Episodic Migraine (EM), Chronic Migraine
(CM) and Medication Overuse Headache
(MOH) to those of the healthy control group
using the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)
technique, also by looking into the correla-
tion between the number of painful days
and attacks and the current hippocampal
volumes.
Methods – A total of 30 patients (10 EM,
10 CM, 10 MOH) from 18 to 45 years
of age diagnosed with migraine and
also followed up by the neurology out-
patient clinic from February to May 2022
and 30 healthy volunteers of similar ages
and sexes to the patient group were inclu-
ded in the study. In addition to the routine
cranial MRI protocols of all the participants,
further cranial images were taken with the
addition of the T1W 3D FSPGR sequence
adjusted to the hippocampal body in the
coronal plane and covering the whole brain.
Hippocampal volumes were measured
manually.
Results – There were 27 females and 3
males in the patient group versus 28 females
and 2 males in the control group, and no sta-
tistically significant differences in age and sex
were found between the groups. The control
group had higher average right, left and total
hippocampal volumes than the whole pa-
tient group, but only the total hippocampal
volume was significantly different between
the groups. There was a negative correlation
between the number of painful days and the
measured right hippocampal and total hip-
pocampal volumes; however, the measured
values were not statistically significant.
Conclusion – It was concluded that the
changes in the hippocampal volume in
migraine might be associated with the pain
characteristics of the disorder