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Different Aspects of Aging in Migraine

Michał Fila, Elżbieta Pawłowska, Joanna Szczepańska, Janusz Błasiak

Aging and Disease, 2023

23 citations

Abstract

Migraine is a common neurological disease displaying an unusual dependence on age. For most patients, the peak intensity of migraine headaches occurs in 20s and lasts until 40s, but then headache attacks become less intense, occur less frequently and the disease is more responsive to therapy. This relationship is valid in both females and males, although the prevalence of migraine in the former is 2-4 times greater than the latter. Recent concepts present migraine not only as a pathological event, but rather as a part of evolutionary adaptive response to protect organism against consequences of stress-induced brain energy deficit. However, these concepts do not fully explain that unusual dependence of migraine prevalence on age. Many aspects of aging, both molecular/cellular and social/cognitive, are interwound in migraine pathogenesis, but they neither explain why only some persons are affected by migraine, nor suggest any causal relationship. In this narrative/hypothesis review we present information on associations of migraine with chronological aging, brain aging, cellular senescence, stem cell exhaustion as well as social, cognitive, epigenetic, and metabolic aging. We also underline the role of oxidative stress in these associations. We hypothesize that migraine affects only individuals who have inborn, genetic/epigenetic, or acquired (traumas, shocks or complexes) migraine predispositions. These predispositions weakly depend on age and affected individuals are more…

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