This may sound scary, but researchers say it s actually reassuring: Women who suffer migraines are more likely to have brain lesions (hyperintense areas) detectable on an MRI.
The fact that there is no evidence of cognitive loss among these women is good news, says Dr. Linda Porter, pain health science policy adviser in the Office of the Director at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
Principal investigator Dr. Mark C. Kruit of the Leiden University Medical Center, the Netherlands, and colleagues tracked 286 men and women with and without migraines for nine years for the study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. While the migraines showed up as brain abnormalities on an MRI, researchers found no signs of memory loss or permanent neurological problems in the women.
The most important aspect of this study, aside of course from the absence of clinical disease among the women, is that the MRI changes may give researchers a clue as to what really causes the migraine syndrome, which can be quite disabling, ACSH s Dr. Gilbert Ross says. Thankfully, new treatments developed over the past decade have led to significant reduction in sick days and other impacts, which if untreated can leave migraine sufferers unable to do simple daily activities for hours on end.