Harvard Iranian researcher said to ISNA that the late treatment of migraine could cause dangerous brain damage.

An Iranian professor's research in Harvard University, reveals for the first time, the difference in the sensory zone of the cortex layer in brains of patients with migraine symptom with ordinary patients. This could open new horizons in diagnosis and cure of this mysterious illness.

Dr. Nouchine Hadjikhani, assistant professor of the radiography section of the Medicine Department of Harvard University, described her achievements in a research which was vastly reflected in scientific circles, and said to ISNA research reporter: We studied the sensor part of the cortex of brains in 24 patients in Massachuset general hospital. The brain scan of these patients, with a long history of migraine, usually having headaches four times a month for the last twenty years, were compared to 12 brain scans of persons without a migraine syndrome. The study showed that the part in the cortex usually responsible for processing signals from the face and head, are 12 times thicker in patients with migraine illness than in normal people.

Answering if this study would help cure this illness, she said: This study has not yet been operational and has no direct impact on the cure of the illness, but it obviously reveals the fact that the patients with this symptom should begin their medical treatment as soon as possible in order to avoid the brain damage.

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Dr. Hadjikhani denied any direct link between the recent founding and the over sensitiveness of migraine patients to light and noise, but said these factors could well intensifies the patients headaches.

She said that it is not still quite clear that this difference in brain structure is the cause or the result of migraine headaches, because it is probable that because of permanent stimulation of certain parts of the brain it might become thicker and this might in turn be the reason for the headaches.

Dr Hadjikhani asserted that there is a genetic disorder which causes this illness but said the environmental factors are also important in intensifying the disease.

According to ISNA, Dr Nouchine Hadjikhani has an Iranian father ans a Swiss mother and was born in Lausanne in Switzerland where she had studied medicine and gone to Sweden for further studies.

She went to the US on 1996 and started to work in Boston. She has created a laboratory in Lausanne last year to continue her researches in Switzerland as well.

Note: Original article published in Persian by ISNA.
Translated for Payvand.com by BMarz translators: http://www.BMarz.com

 

... Payvand News - 12/10/07 ...