Migraine with and without aura share the same pathogenic mechanisms.
Migraine with aura and without aura share the same clinical features with respect to the headache, and differ nosologically in the presence or absence of aura. The mechanisms of aura generation are now becoming clearer, based on imaging studies, and a common migraine pathophysiology for all subtypes of migraine headaches now seems reasonable, as it would seem implausible that all of these neurological events have different pathogenic mechanisms. Both major subtypes of migraine clearly represent a perturbation of normal physiology and employ normal anatomic pathways to generate the aura and headache, similar to aura and a seizure. So what is the mechanism of migraine aura? Do migraine without aura patients have clinically silent aura? Migraine is after all defined as a clinical disorder and is the prototypic primary headache and thus its uniform pathogenesis must underlie all that we know about migraine clinically. This presentation will take the resolve that the migraine with and without aura share the same pathogenic mechanisms.
Department of Medicine, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada. a.purdy@dal.ca
R Allan
RA
Purdy
D006801:Humans; D020325:Migraine with Aura / Q000209:etiology*; D020326:Migraine without Aura / Q000209:etiology*