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Objective: To delineate the structural connectome alterations in patients with chronic migraine (CM), episodic migraine (EM), and healthy controls (HCs). Background: The pathogenesis of migraine chronification remains elusive, with structural brain network changes potentially playing a key role. However, there is a paucity of research employing graph theory analysis to explore changes in the whole brain structural networks in patients with CM and EM. Methods: The individual structural brain connectome of 60 patients with CM, 34 patients with EM, and 39 healthy control participants were constructed by using deterministic diffusion-tensor tractography. Graph metrics including global efficiency, characteristic path length, local efficiency, clustering coefficient, and small-world parameters were evaluated to describe the topologic organization of the white matter structural networks. Additionally, nodal clustering coefficient and efficiency were considered to assess the regional characteristics of the brain connectome. A graph-based statistic was used to assess brain network properties across the groups. Results: Graph theory analysis revealed significant disruptions in the structural brain networks of CM patients, characterized by reduced global efficiency, local efficiency, and increased characteristic path length compared to HCs. Additionally, CM patients exhibited significantly lower local efficiency than EM patients. Notably, the CM group demonstrated marked reductions in local clustering coefficient and nodal local efficiency in the frontal and temporal regions compared with the healthy control group and EM group. Nodal local efficiency can effectively distinguish CM from EM and HCs. Moreover, the disrupted topologic efficiency was significantly associated with attack frequency and MIDAS score in patients with migraine after Bonferroni correction. Conclusion: Decreased structural connectivity in the frontal and temporal regions may serve as a neuroimaging marker for migraine chronification and disease progression, providing valuable insights into the pathophysiology of chronic migraine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: New daily persistent headache (NDPH) is a rare primary headache disorder characterized by daily and persistent sudden onset headaches. Specific abnormalities in gray matter and white matter structure are associated with pain, but have not been well studied in NDPH. The objective of this work is to explore the fiber tracts and structural connectivity, which can help reveal unique gray and white matter structural abnormalities in NDPH. Methods: The regional radiomics similarity networks were calculated from T1 weighted (T1w) MRI to depict the gray matter structure. The fiber connectivity matrices weighted by diffusion metrics like fractional anisotropy (FA), mean diffusivity (MD) and radial diffusivity (RD) were built, meanwhile the fiber tracts were segmented by anatomically-guided superficial fiber segmentation (Anat-SFSeg) method to explore the white matter structure from diffusion MRI. The considerable different neuroimaging features between NDPH and healthy controls (HC) were extracted from the connectivity and tract-based analyses. Finally, decision tree regression was used to predict the clinical scores (i.e. pain intensity) from the above neuroimaging features. Results: T1w and diffusion MRI data were available in 51 participants after quality control: 22 patients with NDPH and 29 HCs. Significantly decreased morphological similarity was found between the right superior frontal gyrus and right hippocampus. The superficial white matter (SWM) showed significantly decreased FA in fiber tracts including the right superficial-frontal, left superficial-occipital, bilateral superficial-occipital-temporal (Sup-OT) and right superficial-temporal, meanwhile significant increased RD was found in the left Sup-OT. For the fiber connectivity, NDPH showed significantly decreased FA in the bilateral basal ganglion and temporal lobe, increased MD in the right frontal lobe, and increased RD in the right frontal lobe and left temporal-occipital lobe. Clinical scores could be predicted dominantly by the above significantly different neuroimaging features through decision tree regression. Conclusions: Our research indicates the structural abnormalities of SWM and the neural pathways projected between regions like right hippocampus and left caudate nucleus, along with morphological similarity changes between the right superior frontal gyrus and right hippocampus, constitute the pathological features of NDPH. The decision tree regression demonstrates correlations between these structural changes and clinical scores. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Migraine is a highly prevalent and complex neurovascular disease. However, the currently available therapeutic drugs often fall to adequately meet clinical needs due to limited effectiveness and numerous undesirable side effects. This study aims to identify putative novel targets for migraine treatment through proteome-wide Mendelian randomization (MR). Methods: We utilized MR to estimate the causal effects of plasma proteins on migraine and its two subtypes, migraine with aura (MA) and without aura (MO). This analysis integrated plasma protein quantitative trait loci (pQTL) data with genome-wide association studies (GWAS) findings for these migraine phenotypes. Moreover, we conducted a phenome-wide MR assessment, enrichment analysis, protein–protein interaction networks construction, and mediation MR analysis to further validate the pharmaceutical potential of the identified protein targets. Results: We identified 35 protein targets for migraine and its subtypes (p < 8.04 × 10–6), with prioritized targets showing minimal side effects. Phenome-wide MR identified novel protein targets—FCAR, UBE2L6, LATS1, PDCD1LG2, and MMP3—that have no major disease side effects and interacted with current acute migraine medication targets. Additionally, MMP3, PDCD1LG2, and HBQ1 interacted with current preventive migraine medication targets. The causal effects of plasma protein on migraine were partly mediated by plasma metabolites (proportion of mediation from 3.8% to 21.0%). Conclusions: A set of potential protein targets for migraine and its subtypes were identified. These proteins showed rare side effects and were responsible for biological mechanisms involved in migraine pathogenesis, indicating priority for the development of migraine treatments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: New daily persistent headache (NDPH) is a rare primary headache with unclear pathogenesis. Neuroimaging studies of NDPH are limited, and controversy still exists. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is commonly used to study the white matter. However, lacking specificity, the potential pathological mechanisms of white matter microstructural changes remain poorly understood. In addition, the intricacy of gray matter structures impedes the application of the DTI model. Here, we applied an advanced diffusion model of neurite orientation dispersion and density imaging (NODDI) to study the white matter and cortical gray matter microstructure in patients with NDPH. Methods: This study assessed brain microstructure, including 27 patients with NDPH, and matched 28 healthy controls (HCs) by NODDI. The differences between the two groups were assessed by tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS) and surface-based analysis (SBA), focusing on the NODDI metrics (neurite density index (NDI), orientation dispersion index (ODI), and isotropic volume fraction (ISOVF)). Furthermore, we performed Pearson's correlation analysis between the NODDI indicators and clinical characteristics. Results: Compared to HCs, patients with NDPH had a reduction of density and complexity in several fiber tracts. For robust results, the fiber tracts were defined as comprising more than 100 voxels, including bilateral inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus (IFOF), left superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF) and inferior longitudinal fasciculus (ILF), as well as right corticospinal tract (CST). Moreover, the reduction of neurite density was uncovered in the left superior and middle frontal cortex, left precentral cortex, and right lateral orbitofrontal cortex and insula. There was no correlation between the NODDI metrics of these brain regions and clinical variables or scales of relevance after the Bonferroni correction. Conclusions: Our research indicated that neurite loss was detected in both white matter and cortical gray matter of patients with NDPH. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]