• Eur J Pain · Oct 2008

    Comparative Study

    Neck muscles' cross-sectional area in adolescents with and without headache - MRI study.

    • Airi Oksanen Department of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine, Turku University Central Hospital, P.O. Box 52, FIN-20521 Turku, Finland. airi.oksanen@tyks.fi, Minna Erkintalo, Liisa Metsähonkala, Pirjo Anttila, Katri Laimi, Heikki Hiekkanen, Jouko J Salminen, Minna Aromaa, and Matti Sillanpää.
    • Department of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine, Turku University Central Hospital, P.O. Box 52, FIN-20521 Turku, Finland. airi.oksanen@tyks.fi
    • Eur J Pain. 2008 Oct 1;12(7):952-9.

    BackgroundCervical musculature may play an important role in the genesis of tension-type headache. However, there are no reports on a possible association between the morphometrical features of the neck flexion and extension muscles and adolescence headache.AimTo examine differences in neck flexion and extension muscles cross-sectional area (CSA) in adolescents with and without headache.MethodsA population-based sample of 17-year-old adolescents with migraine (N=19), tension-type headache (N=24) and healthy controls without headache (N=22) was examined. CSA of the neck muscles was measured from axial T1-weighted magnetic resonance images (MRI).ResultsBoys with tension-type headache showed significantly smaller CSA of right sternocleidomastoid muscle than boys with migraine and girls with tension-type headache showed significantly smaller CSA of combined right sternocleidomastoid and scalenus muscles than girls with migraine. In addition, boys with migraine had significantly larger CSA of both right sternocleidomastoid and combined right sternocleidomastoid and scalenus muscles, and left semispinalis capitis muscle and combined left semispinalis and splenius muscles than boys without headache. In boys and girls no other significant differences were observed in the CSA of neck flexion or extension muscles.ConclusionsThis preliminary work demonstrates that both girls and boys with tension-type headache and migraine have differences in the size of neck flexion muscles, especially unilaterally. In boys, unilaterally increased size of neck flexion and extension muscles is associated with migraine. These findings, if confirmed in further studies, may have important diagnostic and therapeutic implications for rehabilitation of adolescents with headache.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…