By Maija Vogt Health Reporter Dailymail.Com
Updated: July 4, 2024 19:01, July 4, 2024 19:34
Scientists have discovered a new mechanism by which migraines begin, a breakthrough that could aid in the development of new drugs to treat the debilitating disease.
More than one million Americans suffer from migraines, which can cause nausea, paralyzing pain and keep you from getting out of bed for hours.
One in four people suffer from symptoms such as extreme light sensitivity, blurred vision and sun spots, which can interfere with their daily lives.
Despite the commonality of these migraines, scientists have little understanding of what causes these attacks, and many people don’t have any effective medications.
But researchers have discovered that during a migraine with aura, a unique protein is produced that escapes the brain through tiny openings, causing intense pain.
Researchers have long known that for a person to feel pain, a migraine needs to stimulate pain receptors on the outside of the migraine.
How migraines travel from the brain to other parts of the body “has remained largely a mystery,” said Dr. Jeffrey Iliff of the University of Washington School of Medicine and Dr. Andrew Russo of the University of Iowa, who were not involved in the study.
Dr. Iliff and Dr. Russo called the authors “pioneering” and said the study could help find new drugs for migraine sufferers. In the published response Towards new research.
Over-the-counter painkillers like Advil or Tylenol often help people with moderate headaches, but for migraine sufferers, this usually isn’t enough.
There are FDA-approved medications for migraine headaches, but they don’t work for many people, said study authors from the University of Copenhagen and University of Rochester Medical Center.
Migraines are not just a bad headache, they are more serious than that. Dr. Christopher Gottschalksaid Dr. Fritz Schneider, director of the Headache and Facial Pain Center at Yale University School of Medicine, who was not involved in the study.
That’s why your doctor may prescribe medications like triptans, which can treat a migraine after it has started, or antidepressants, antiseizure drugs, or beta-blockers, which can prevent a migraine.
But these drugs vary widely in effectiveness, and even when they work, they come with unpleasant side effects, including nausea, insomnia, memory problems, weight gain and hair loss, Dr. Gottschalk said.
These side effects make the drugs “not a good choice” for many migraine sufferers, he said, and “the price is often too prohibitive for people.”
But to develop drugs to treat migraines more effectively, doctors must understand what causes them — something that has been researched for “thousands of years” but remains controversial, the study authors said.
Researchers have long known that migraines do not directly affect the brain, as the brain itself does not have the ability to sense pain.
The brain is surrounded by multiple membranes that seal it off from the rest of the body, allowing only what is absolutely necessary to get through. It’s difficult for molecules to get through these layers, either in or out.
Researchers had no idea how these pesky migraines get around these barriers.
But it turns out that with certain types of migraines, strange visual symptoms like blurred vision, bright lights, and black spots can start appearing about an hour to five minutes before the pain begins.
In fact, when the aura begins, there’s a lot of fluid and brain signals moving through the brain, pushing out those little molecules that cause the migraine.
The study found that in mice, migraine-causing molecules escape the brain in this fluid and are pushed out through tiny gaps where the nerves that control the face protrude from the brain.
This is the first time this gap has been identified, Iliff and Russo wrote.
They believe that these tiny particles, which are tiny proteins, could provide new drug targets to stop migraines.
“This study provides the strongest data to date on the role of the glymphatic system in migraine, but there is still much to discover,” Drs. Iliff and Russo wrote.
Some of the molecules identified in the new study were already being investigated by pharmaceutical companies, the researchers said.
In 2018, the FDA launched the first of the drugs, called “calcitonin gene-related peptide inhibitors” after the specific protein they are designed to combat.
At the time, the American Migraine Foundation called this class of drugs “the biggest news in migraine treatment and prevention in decades.” But it’s not a migraine fix for everyone.
Therefore, the other molecules the researchers discovered could be key to enabling “the discovery of new pharmacological targets that could benefit the large proportion of patients who do not respond to existing therapies,” said study author Martin Karg Rasmussen, PhD.