Eye artery narrowing seen in migraine

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Adults who suffer from bouts of migraine without aura have slightly narrower retinal blood vessels, or arterioles, than adults without migraine, research shows. The finding supports the hypothesis that microvascular disease may be associated with certain types of migraine, investigators note in a report in the journal Headache.

Dr. Gerald Liew from the University of Sydney, Australia and colleagues used recently developed quantitative techniques to measure small vessel calibers from retinal photographs taken in 2,335 older individuals (aged 54+) as part of the Blue Mountains Eye Study, an Australian population-based cohort study.

Subjects with a history of migraine without aura (n = 128) had narrower retinal arterioles than subjects with a history of migraine with aura (n = 182) or subjects with no history of migraine (n = 1619), the team observed.

The findings held up in analyses adjusting for potentially confounding factors.

"We found that in all age groups retinal arteriolar diameter was narrowest in persons with migraine without aura compared to persons with migraine with aura, and those without migraine, suggesting an effect independent of age," Liew and colleagues report.

The findings, they note, support previous work indicating that "arteriolar tone in the retinal and cerebral arterioles is abnormal in persons with migraine, particularly migraine without aura."

SOURCE: Headache June 2006.