Migraine is a severely debilitating disorder, and accounts for a large number of sick days. The illness occurs in 10 to 12 percent of the population, and in one in three patients is accompanied by “aura” (visual symptoms). Maybe migraine can be cured. Marco Post found a strong link between migraine and abnormalities in blood circulation. In about a quarter of the population, the arterial and venous circulatory systems are connected by what is known as a shunt. Of this group, 39 percent has migraine. When this shunt is closed off using heart catheterization, this percentage of migraine then drops to 16 percent, and for migraine with aura from 18 to 6 percent.
More rarely, “the migraine” is found not in the heart but in the lungs, usually in the congenital Rendu-Osler-Weber disease. Rendu-Osler-Weber patients with a lung shunt are more likely to suffer from migraine (21 percent) than those patients with no lung shunt (13 percent). And if a catheterization procedure is used to close a large lung shunt, the percentage of migraine then drops from 45 to 34 percent, and for migraine with aura from 33 to 19 percent. It is possible that shunt closure will become a good method for treating patients with severe migraine, although this still has to be confirmed by major trials.
Marco Post
Shunt closure and migraine relief
PhD advisor 1: Prof. W. Budts
PhD advisor 2: Prof. P.A. Doevendans
Co-advisor 1: Dr. C.J.J Westermann
Co-advisor 2: Dr. T.H Plokker