Abstract
There has been accumulating evidence on sex disparity in incidence, prevalence, symptomology, and burden of migraine. Several neuroimaging studies on migraine patients attempted to unravel the mechanisms of the disease, yet very few of them examined the sex-related differences. Here, we will first discuss some of the reported neuroimaging patterns that discriminate females from males in migraine. We will then re-examine the salient neuroimaging findings in migraine and discuss them in relation to sex-related influences. Finally, we will discuss some of the intriguing recent data suggesting the presence of sex-specific traits in migraineurs. These findings may have potential implications for future neuroimaging studies to identify underlying correlating patterns in the brain to (1) explain the neural basis for higher prevalence of migraine in women, and (2) better understand migraine-specific changes during different stages of life in both men and women.
Highlights
Despite advances in understanding of the migraine pathophysiology [1], as one of the most prevalent disabling disorders worldwide, migraine disease continues to be an unresolved major public health problem for both men and women [2,3,4,5,6]
Women with migraine showed stronger response to pain in brain regions involved in emotional processing such as the amygdala, which was consistent with increased measures of pain related unpleasantness for them compared to men with migraine
It was found that there was a lack of age-related thinning in the insular cortex in female migraineurs compared to female healthy controls [12]
Summary
There has been accumulating evidence on sex disparity in incidence, prevalence, symptomology, and burden of migraine. Several neuroimaging studies on migraine patients attempted to unravel the mechanisms of the disease, yet very few of them examined the sex-related differences. We will re-examine the salient neuroimaging findings in migraine and discuss them in relation to sex-related influences. We will discuss some of the intriguing recent data suggesting the presence of sex-specific traits in migraineurs. These findings may have potential implications for future neuroimaging studies to identify underlying correlating patterns in the brain to [1] explain the neural basis for higher prevalence of migraine in women, and [2] better understand migraine-specific changes during different stages of life in both men and women
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