Is migraine related to medial meningeal artery and spinous foramen caliber?

Abstract

AimAlthough migraine is one of the headache disorders for which people most often consult a doctor, it still does not have a specific diagnostic labo-ratory or radiologic test. Vasodilation of the medial meningeal artery is wide-ly believed to cause migraines. However, some current hypotheses decrease the role of the vasodilation. If the medial meningeal artery dilates during at-tacks, in the long term it can expand the foramen pass through. Based on this idea, our study investigated whether there is a significant difference between the medial meningeal artery and spinous foramen sizes of migraine patients compared with a control group.MethodThirty-six migraine patients and 26 tension-type headache (TTH) patients as the control group were involved in the study. Patients were scanned with brain CT (computed tomography) angiography. The medial meningeal artery and spinous foramen sizes of both groups were measured.ResultsThere was no statistically sig-nificant difference between the measurements of migraine and tension-type headache patients.ConclusionIn our study we could not find any evidence to show vasodilation of the dura mater’s vasculature as a factor of migraine pathophysiology. This result indicates the need to continue investigating the different hypotheses for migraine pathophysiology.

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