Migraine - Genetics Home Reference - NIH

Migraine - Genetics Home Reference - NIH


Migraine

A migraine is a type of headache that typically causes intense, throbbing pain usually in one area of the head. People can experience migraines once a year to multiple times a week. A person is considered to have chronic migraines if they experience 15 or more headache days a month with eight of those days involving migraine headaches. Migraines typically first start during a person's teens to early twenties, but they can begin anytime from early childhood to late-adulthood.

A migraine usually has three stages: the period leading up to the headache (known as the premonitory or prodromal phase), the migraine itself (the headache phase), and the period following the headache (known as the postdromal phase).

The premonitory phase can start from several hours up to several days before the headache appears. In this phase, affected individuals can experience extreme tiredness (fatigue), concentration problems, and muscle stiffness in the neck. A wide variety of additional signs and symptoms can occur including excessive yawning, food cravings, irritability, depression, sensitivity to light, and nausea. About one-third of people with migraine experience a temporary pattern of neurological symptoms called an aura. An aura typically develops gradually over a few minutes and lasts between 5 and 60 minutes. Auras commonly include temporary visual changes such as blind spots (scotomas), flashing lights, and zig-zagging lines of color. Additional features of aura can include numbness, difficulty with speech and language, episodes of extreme dizziness (vertigo), and double vision. During an aura, affected individuals might experience abnormal sensations including tingling or numbness, usually of the hands or mouth. An aura usually starts within one hour of the start of a migraine. In some cases, an aura can occur without a subsequent migraine.

In the headache phase, the pain may last from a few hours to a few days. Affected individuals tend to experience nausea, vomiting, dizziness, and sensitivity to light and sound in addition to headache. Some have changes in their vision or sensitivity to odors and touch.

The postdromal phase usually lasts a few hours but can linger for more than a day. In this phase, the headache pain is gone but individuals can experience fatigue, drowsiness, decreased energy, concentration problems, irritability, nausea, or sensitivity to light. Affected individuals may also have brief episodes of head pain when moving their head.

People with migraine, particularly women who have migraine with aura, have an increased risk of a type of stroke that is caused by a lack of blood flow to the brain (ischemic stroke), but this is a rare occurrence.

There are many migraine disorders that usually include additional signs and symptoms. For example, familial hemiplegic migraine and sporadic hemiplegic migraine are characterized by migraine with associated temporary weakness that affects one side of the body (hemiparesis). Additionally, cyclic vomiting syndrome is a migraine disorder usually found in children that causes episodes of nausea and vomiting in addition to headaches.