Highlights
- •Migraineurs show sensory over-responsiveness to everyday sensations.
- •Sensory over-responsiveness is more common in migraineurs with aura.
- •Attack frequency correlates with sensory over-responsiveness and pain summation.
Abstract
Migraineurs with aura (MWA) express higher interictal response to non-noxious and
noxious experimental sensory stimuli compared with migraineurs without aura (MWoA),
but whether these differences also prevail in response to everyday non-noxious stimuli
is not yet explored. This is a cross-sectional study testing 53 female migraineurs
(30 MWA; 23 MWoA) who underwent a wide battery of noxious psychophysical testing at
a pain-free phase, and completed a Sensory Responsiveness Questionnaire and pain-related
psychological questionnaires. The MWA group showed higher questionnaire-based sensory
over-responsiveness (P = .030), higher magnitude of pain temporal summation (P = .031) as well as higher monthly attack frequency (P = .027) compared with the MWoA group. Overall, 45% of migraineurs described abnormal
sensory (hyper- or hypo-) responsiveness; its incidence was higher among MWA (19 of
30, 63%) versus MWoA (6 of 23, 27%, P = .012), with an odds ratio of 3.58 for MWA. Sensory responsiveness scores were positively
correlated with attack frequency (r = .361, P = .008) and temporal summation magnitude (r = .390, P = .004), both regardless of migraine type. MWA express higher everyday sensory responsiveness
than MWoA, in line with higher response to experimental noxious stimuli. Abnormal
scores of sensory responsiveness characterize people with sensory modulation dysfunction,
suggesting possible underlying mechanisms overlap, and possibly high incidence of
both clinical entities.
Perspective
This article presents findings distinguishing MWA, showing enhanced pain amplification,
monthly attack frequency, and over-responsiveness to everyday sensations, compared
with MWoA. Further, migraine is characterized by a high incidence of abnormal responsiveness
to everyday sensation, specifically sensory over-responsiveness, that was also found
related to pain.
Key words
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: March 26, 2018
Accepted:
March 16,
2018
Received in revised form:
February 11,
2018
Received:
November 30,
2017
Footnotes
This study was sponsored by Migraine Research Foundation, USA.
The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
Identification
Copyright
© 2018 by the American Pain Society
