Last week Migraines were good for fending off memory loss in middle age people. Now this week migraines are causing brain damage that potentially can lead to strokes. Pretty fair trade off eh?! Better memory for a horribly disabling stroke that might destroy your memory anyway (well... or kill you)!
Alright... here's the details:
The research, which was done in mice, also suggests giving oxygen may help reduce the damage, said Takahiro Takano, Maiken Nedergaard and colleagues at the University of Rochester in New York, working with a team at the Danish pharmaceutical group Novo Nordisk.They studied a process called cortical spreading depression, known as CSD, a wave of changes in cells associated with migraine, stroke and head trauma.
They used a precise two-photon microscopic and oxygen sensor microelectrodes to look at the brains of live mice while they caused this process.
They saw a swelling occur and the brain cells became starved of oxygen. The nerve cells were damaged -- specifically the dendrites, the long, thin spikes that stretch from one nerve cell to another.
Comments
As with world news nowadays, health news must also be analyzed for ulterior motive. I think this story marks the beginning drum beats of bad news about migraines in anticipation of new migraine drugs being launched in the near future. One such drug will be a combination of two old drugs (a serotonin analog combined with naproxen, better known as "Aleve"). This strategy of combining established drugs keeps the patent going for the PharmaCo's while presenting very low risks (to health and business) relative to new first-in-class drugs.
The memory-protection story will be either ignored or qualified as not-connected-to-treatment by the medical community.
Given the higher risk of stroke migraine sufferers have, I'm not sure it makes sense to treat the problem with naproxen, which raises stroke risk.
Posted by: Roy | May 2, 2007 2:54 PM
Mmmm.... I don't know about migraines fending off memory loss, but I do know about them causing strokes...since I had one caused by a migraine.
What's the evidence that naproxen increases stroke risk? I've had it prescribed to me for treatment of migraine pain post-stroke, by my neurologists, who didn't seem to think there were any stroke risks associated with taking it...they certainly preferred it to other migraine treatment alternatives.
Posted by: Zuska | August 2, 2007 11:33 PM