Can a familial history of migraine and motion sickness be used in the diagnosis of childhood migraine?

OBJECTIVE

Childhood migraine is a recurrent neurobiological complex disease and caused by multiple genetic and environmental factors. In this study, the clinical relevance of ICHD-3 diagnostic criteria, familial history of migraine and motion sickness was investigated.

METHODS

This study was conducted on children aged 10-18 years, who were randomly selected from 22 middle and 26 high schools. The survey, prepared in Turkish, asked about headache characteristics (ICHD-3 diagnostic criteria: 7 items), familial history of migraine, and presence of motion sickness (2 items).

RESULTS

According to data from the survey, 4 main factors emerged in the exploratory factor analysis. Photophobia, pain attack duration ≥1 h, headache attacks more than 4 times, familial history of migraine in factor-1, vomiting and nausea in factor-2, pulsatile pain and forehead and bitemporal localization in factor-3, avoidance routine physical activities and motion sickness in factor-4 are collected.

CONCLUSION

Migraine, in which strong genetic pieces of evidence have been uncovered is a multifactorial brain disease. Moreover, the intense connections between the trigeminal system and vestibular nuclei demonstrated in the current literature reveal that the relationship between motion sickness and migraine cannot be ignored. Therefore, a positive familial history and motion sickness in childhood migraine are important additional diagnostic clues in addition to ICHD-3.