Neurological sciences : official journal of the Italian Neurological Society and of the Italian Society of Clinical Neurophysiology
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The burden of migraine strongly increases, considering its linkage with sleep disorders. Migraine is positively associated with many sleep-complaint disorders; some are confirmed by several studies, such as restless leg syndrome, whereas others still remain uncertain or controversial, e.g. narcolepsy. Many studies have investigated the association between headache and other sleep disturbances such as daytime sleepiness, insomnia, snoring and/or apnea, but only a few have focused on migraine. Highlighting the comorbidity between migraine and sleep disorders is important to improve treatment strategies and to extend the knowledge of migraine pathophysiology.
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The recently advanced hypothesis that idiopathic intracranial hypertension without papilledema (IIHWOP) is a powerful risk factor for the progression of pain in individuals prone to episodic primary headache implies that IIHWOP is much more prevalent than it is believed to be in the general population and that it can run almost asymptomatic in most of the affected individuals. In this review, we discuss the evidence available supporting that: (a) sinus venous stenosis-associated IIHWOP is much more prevalent than believed in the general population and can run without symptoms or signs of raised intracranial pressure in most of individuals affected, (b) sinus venous stenosis is a very sensitive and specific predictor of intermittent or continuous idiopathic intracranial hypertension with or without papilledema, even in asymptomatic individuals, (c) in primary headache prone individuals, a comorbidity with a hidden stenosis-associated IIHWOP represents a very common, although largely underestimated, modifiable risk factor for the progression and refractoriness of headache.
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In the field of chronic forms of headache, medication overuse headache (MOH) seems to be a problematic argument as the correct position of this clinical condition in the International Headache Society (IHS) classification is not clear yet. In 1988, when IHS organized the first classification of the different forms of headache, the clinical problem of medication overuse was included in the section eight of the IHS; during the last decades the criteria of the classification changed, and now this form is included in the classification system as a clinical condition distinguished from chronic migraine and other chronic forms of headache. The different models of classification are discussed and the clinical and practical aspects are considered in this paper.
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Patients with chronic migraine developing medication-overuse headache (MOH) show dependency-like behaviors such as loss of control over analgesics despite adverse consequences on headaches, high rates of relapse after withdrawal from symptomatic medications, and compromised social functioning. Neuroimaging research suggests a common pathophysiology between substance-use disorders and MOH, which involves functional alterations in fronto-striatal networks, particularly in the orbitofrontal region of prefrontal cortex. These findings could explain the impaired decision-making observed in substance-use disorders. ⋯ Looking at these shared neurocognitive features, our results suggest that MOH could belong to the addiction spectrum. Fronto-striatal dysfunction could be a premorbid psychobiological condition of vulnerability explaining the clinical onset of medication overuse and recurrent relapses. We propose that IGT could be used to identify chronic migraine patients with higher risk for medication overuse and relapse.
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Patients with chronic migraine (CM) and medication overuse (MO) have a high frequency of psychiatric comorbidity or psychopathological traits, the presence of which may have important implications for the course of the CM and the MO, both for response to treatment and possible relapses. Overuse of symptomatic drugs is regarded as one of the most important risk factor for the transformation of episodic migraine into CM and drug-seeking tendency due to fear of headache in chronic migraine patients shares with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) the compulsive quality of the behavior. ⋯ According to data obtained from the clinical records referring to the previous 5 years, patients with OBS questionnaire positivity showed a worse clinical course and a tendency to early relapse in MO after symptomatic medication withdrawal. Our results show that the comorbidity of OCD should be always evaluated in patients with CM and MO as it may play a relevant role--particularly if not treated--among the risk factors favoring the progression of episodic migraine to the chronic form, and/or the tendency to a pathological behavior that prompts the overuse of symptomatic medications.