• Tsubasa Takizawa, Keiko Ihara, Miyuki Unekawa, Chisato Iba, Shizuko Kagawa, Narumi Watanabe, Shingo Nakayama, Kaori Sakurai, Naoki Miyazaki, Noriyuki Ishida, Ryo Takemura, Mamoru Shibata, Yoshikane Izawa, Shotaro Chubachi, Koichi Fukunaga, and Jin Nakahara.
• Department of Neurology, Keio University School of Medicine, Tokyo, 160-8582, Japan. tsubasa.takizawa@z5.keio.jp.
• J Headache Pain. 2024 Oct 2; 25 (1): 162162.

BackgroundPatients with migraine are typically advised to avoid passive smoking because it may aggravate headaches and other health conditions. However, there is insufficient high-quality evidence on the association between passive smoking and migraine, which warrants further investigation using animal models. Therefore, using a mouse model, we examined the effect of passive smoking on susceptibility to cortical spreading depolarization (CSD), the biological basis of migraine with aura.FindingsFifty C57BL/6 mice (25 males and 25 females) were exposed for one hour to cigarette smoke or room air. Subsequently, potassium chloride (KCl) was administered under isoflurane anesthesia to induce CSD, and the CSD threshold, frequency of induction, and propagation velocity were determined. The threshold to induce CSD (median [interquartile range (IQR)]) was significantly lower in female mice (adjusted p = 0.01) in the smoking group (0.05 [0.05, 0.088]) than in the sham group (0.125 [0.1, 0.15]); however, there was no significant difference in the male mice (adjusted p = 0.77). CSD frequency or propagation velocity did not differ significantly between the two groups for either sex.ConclusionsFemale mice in the smoking group showed lower CSD threshold compared to the sham group, suggesting a potential sex-specific difference in the effect of smoking on the pathogenesis of CSD and migraine with aura. This finding may contribute to the understanding of migraine pathophysiology in association with passive smoking and sex difference.© 2024. The Author(s).

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