Migraines & brain damage

Migraine can be a progressive disorder and frequent sufferers have an increased risk of brain damage.

Researchers have established the fact that migraine can be a progressive disorder and frequent sufferers have an increased risk of brain damage.

Prof Richard Lipton, from New York's Albert Einstein College of Medicine, while speaking at the Migraine Trust International Symposium in London said there was evidence that in some people migraines get worse with time, leaving many severely disabled in their everyday lives.

"Today we must recognised that a subgroup of migraine sufferers have a progressive disorder with attacks that become more frequent and more disabling over time," Lipton was quoted as saying by The Daily Mail.

The Dutch researchers found that migraine sufferers were at an increased risk of brain lesions. They also found that the risk of suffering brain lesions increased the more frequent migraine attacks were. The researchers concluded that this raised the possibility that migraine produced progressive changes in the brain.

"The identification of individuals at high risk for headache progression creates opportunities to step in to stop this progressive natural history," Prof Lipton added.

He said the priority was to identify people with frequent disabling attacks to control and prevent attacks and avoid progression of the disease.