Key clinical point: During acute headaches, patients with migraine had elevated levels of peripheral inflammatory markers (PIM), specifically the neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and the neutrophil-to-monocyte ratio (NMR), which could fairly differentiate between the migraine and no headache groups.
Major finding: Patients with migraine had higher NLR, NMR, and monocyte-to-lymphocyte ratio (all P < .001) compared with control individuals without headache and higher NMR ( P < .001) and higher NLR ( P = .051) compared with patients with non-migraine headaches during acute headache attacks. NLR and NMR could fairly differentiate between the migraine and no headache groups (NLR: area under the curve [AUC] 0.65; NMR: AUC 0.61; P < .001).
Study details: This was a retrospective analysis of 4005 patients with acute headache attack, including those with migraine (n = 1453) or non-migraine (n = 2552) headaches, and 88,586 control individuals without headache.
Disclosures: This study was supported by Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundataion of Korea funded by the Ministry of Education and others. The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
Source: Lee S-H et al. Role of peripheral inflammatory markers in patients with acute headache attack to differentiate between migraine and non-migraine headache. J Clin Med. 2022;11(21):6538 (Nov 3). Doi: 10.3390/jcm11216538