A milestone study led by University of Queensland researchers has identified the main types of E. coli bacteria that cause neonatal meningitis, and revealed why some infections recur despite being treated with antibiotics.
The study, published in eLife, discovered that about 50% of neonatal meningitis infections are caused by two types of E. coli.
“E. coli is the most common cause of meningitis in babies born pre-term, but knowing which types allows us to test for those strains and treat them appropriately,” said Professor Mark Schembri, who led the study along with Dr Nhu Nguyen and Associate Professor Adam Irwin.
The study was the largest of its type, examining the genomes of 58 different E. coli bacteria across four continents and using samples collected over 46 years. It found that two types of the bacteria were responsible for the majority of neonatal infections.
Rapid diagnosis and monitoring are key
Associate Professor Irwin, who is also a paediatric infectious disease specialist at the Queensland Children’s Hospital, said speed is of the essence to prevent lasting damage.
“While antibiotics can be effective in treating the infection, this relies on rapid diagnosis. Also, antibiotics don’t always eliminate the bacteria – some of the babies we tracked showed signs of a complete recovery before suffering repeated invasive E. coli infections,” he said.
The researchers discovered the bacteria causing subsequent infections were the same as in the initial infection.
“It’s most likely that bacteria hide out in the intestinal microbiome,” Professor Schembri said. “This tells us we need to keep monitoring these babies after their first infection, as they are at a high risk of subsequent infection.”
Professor Schembri said the E. coli that can lead to meningitis also cause urinary tract infections and colonise the intestinal tract. “There is something about these types of E. coli that equips them to cause both infections,” he said.
“Our next step is to examine the bacteria’s pathway from the intestinal tract or urinary tract into the bloodstream, and then to the brain, so we can consider new ways to stop them.”
ES cells can now be used to induce structures with regionalised maxillary and mandibular primordia through the neural crest cell state, allowing for the recapitulation of jaw development in vitro. (POU3F3+ for maxillary and HAND2+ for mandibular)
CREDIT: KyotoU/Mototsugu Eiraku and Yusuke Seto
The highly complex shapes of animal faces originate from their respective transient neural crest cells. These embryonic pluripotent cells within the facial primordium – the early development form – may be necessary for forming proper facial structures. They migrate from their dorsal origin to the ventral craniofacial primordium and contribute to the cartilage, bones, and connective tissues. Analysing the molecular mechanisms in such early stages of development however poses many technical challenges.
Now, a group of Kyoto University researchers have produced neural crest cell-rich aggregates from human pluripotent stem cells and also developed a method to differentiate them in cell populations with a branchial arch-like gene expression pattern. Their research is published in Nature Communications.
“After the cell populations differentiate into precursors of maxillary and mandibular cells in response to external signalling factors, these populations spontaneously form patterns of the facial primordium,” explains Yusuke Seto of KyotoU’s Institute for Life and Medical Sciences.
This cartilage-like structure, reminiscent of Meckel’s cartilage, is formed locally within the aggregates.
“We aim to establish a model for studying early facial development by using the properties of human pluripotent stem cells to generate in vitro tissue resembling the bronchial arch of the primordial face,” adds Ryoma Ogihara, also of the Institute.
Researchers are examining the various developmental processes that cause interspecific and individual differences in facial structure to explain conditions such as craniofacial disorders.
“Using our in vitro model could help us better understand and control signal integration during the fate determination of the branchial arch and cartilage formation in the face and elsewhere. We hope our technology can contribute to the development of cellular materials for new regenerative medicine,” adds Mototsugu Eiraku, also of the Institute.
Scientists have long studied just how the eye’s three cone photoreceptor types work together to allow humans to perceive colour. In a new study in the Journal of Neuroscience, researchers at the University of Rochester used adaptive optics to identify rare retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) that could help fill in the gaps in existing theories of colour perception.
The retina has three types of cones to detect colour that are sensitive to either short, medium, or long wavelengths of light. Retinal ganglion cells transmit input from these cones to the central nervous system.
In the 1980s, David Williams, the William G. Allyn Professor of Medical Optics, helped map the “cardinal directions” that explain colour detection. However, there are differences in the way the eye detects colour and how colour appears to humans. Scientists suspected that while most RGCs follow the cardinal directions, they may work in tandem with small numbers of non-cardinal RGCs to create more complex perceptions.
Recently, a team of researchers from Rochester’s Center for Visual Science, the Institute of Optics, and the Flaum Eye Institute identified some of these elusive non-cardinal RGCs in the fovea that could explain how humans see red, green, blue, and yellow.
“We don’t really know anything for certain yet about these cells other than that they exist,” says Sara Patterson, a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Visual Science who led the study. “There’s so much more that we have to learn about how their response properties operate, but they’re a compelling option as a missing link in how our retina processes colour.”
Adaptive optics peer past the eye’s natural distorations
The team took advantage of adaptive optics, which uses a deformable mirror to overcome light distortion and was first developed by astronomers to reduce atmospheric blurring in ground-based telescopes. In the 1990s, Williams and his colleagues began applying adaptive optics to study the human eye. They created a camera that compensated for distortions caused by the eye’s natural aberrations, producing a clear image of individual photoreceptor cells.
“The optics of the eye’s lens are imperfect and really reduce the amount of resolution you can get with an ophthalmoscope,” says Patterson. “Adaptive optics detects and corrects for these aberrations and gives us a crystal-clear look into the eye. This gives us unprecedented access to the retinal ganglion cells, which are the sole source of visual information to the brain.”
Patterson says improving our understanding of the retina’s complex processes could ultimately help lead to better methods for restoring vision for people who have lost it.
“Humans have more than 20 ganglion cells and our models of human vision are only based on three,” says Patterson. “There’s so much going on in the retina that we don’t know about. This is one of the rare areas where engineering has totally outpaced visual basic science. People are out there with retinal prosthetics in their eyes right now, but if we knew what all those cells do, we could actually have retinal prosthetics drive ganglion cells in accordance with their actual functional roles.”
The most common type of lung fibrosis is idiopathic – of unknown cause. Researchers are urgently trying to find ways to prevent or slow idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) and related lung conditions, which can cause worsening shortness of breath, dry cough, and extreme fatigue. Average survival following diagnosis of IPF is just three to five years, and the disease has no cure.
A recent U-M study from a team led by Sean Fortier, MD and Marc Peters-Golden, MD at University of Michigan Medical School uncovers a pathway used during normal wound healing that has the potential to reverse IPF. They published their research in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
Using a mouse model, they simulated IPF by administering bleomycin, a chemotherapy agent that causes cell injury and confirmed that the resulting lung scarring resolved itself over the span of about six weeks.
Because of this, “studying fibrosis is kind of tough,” said Fortier. “If we’re going to give experimental drugs to try and resolve fibrosis, we have to do it before it resolves on its own.
Otherwise, we will not be able to tell if the resolution was the action of the drug or natural repair mechanisms of the body.”
However, he said, “there’s actually a lot to learn about how the mouse gets better on its own. If we can learn the molecular mechanisms by which this occurs, we may uncover new targets for IPF.”
The process by which lung injury either leads to healing or fibrosis relies in part on what happens to fibroblasts – cells which forms connective tissue.
During injury or illness, fibroblasts are activated, becoming myofibroblasts that form scar tissue by secreting collagen. When the job is done, these fibroblasts must be deactivated, or de-differentiated, to go back to their quiet state or undergo programmed cell death and be cleared.
“This is the major distinction between normal wound healing and fibrosis – the persistence of activated myofibroblasts,” explained Fortier. That deactivation is controlled by molecular brakes. The study examined one of these brakes, called MKP1 – which the team found was expressed at lower levels in fibroblasts from patients with IPF.
By genetically eliminating MKP1 in fibroblasts of mice after establishing lung injury, the team saw that fibrosis continued uncontrolled.
“Instead of at day 63, seeing that nice resolution, you still see fibrosis,” said Fortier.
“We argued by contradiction: when you knock out this brake, fibrosis that would otherwise naturally disappear, persists and therefore MKP1 is necessary for spontaneous resolution of fibrosis.”
They performed several additional studies using CRISPR techniques to demonstrate how MKP1 applies the brakes, mainly by deactivating the enzyme p38α, which is implicated in a cell’s reaction to stress.
Furthermore, they demonstrated that neither of the two current FDA approved drugs for lung fibrosis, pirfenidone and nintedanib, are able to turn off myofibroblasts.
“That’s totally in keeping with the fact that they do slow the progression, but they don’t halt or reverse disease,” said Fortier.
Fortier hopes the discovery that this pathway reverses fibrosis leads to exploration of additional brakes on fibrosis.
“So much work on fibrosis has focused on how we can prevent it, but when a patient presents to my clinic with a dry cough, shortness of breath, and low oxygen as a result of underlying IPF, the scarring is already present. Of course, we’d love a way to prevent the scarring from getting worse, but the Holy Grail is to reverse it.”
A new study published in Life Science Alliance revealed how aberrant epigenetic regulation contributes to the development of atypical teratoid/rhabdoid (AT/RT) tumours, which mainly affect young children. There is an urgent need for more research in this area as current treatment options are ineffective against these highly malignant tumours.
Most tumours take a long time to develop as harmful mutations gradually accumulate in cells’ DNA over time. AT/RT tumours are a rare exception, because the inactivation of one gene gives rise to this highly aggressive form of brain cancer.
AT/RT tumours are rare central nervous system embryonic tumours that predominantly affect infants and young children.
On average, 73 people are diagnosed with AT/RT in the USA each year. However, AT/RT is the most common central nervous system tumour in children under one years old and accounts for 40-50% of diagnoses in this age group. The prognosis for AT/RT patients is grim, with a postoperative median survival of only 11-24 months.
The collaborative study conducted by Tampere University and Tampere University Hospital examined how aberrant DNA methylation distorts cellular developmental trajectories and thereby contributes to the formation of AT/RT. DNA methylation is a normal process of controlling expression whereby methyl groups are added to the DNA strand, adding epigenetic information.
The new study showed that DNA methylation interferes with the activity of multiple regulators, which usually regulate the differentiation and maturation of central nervous system cells during brain development. Disrupted cell differentiation promotes the abnormal, uncontrolled proliferation of cells that eventually form a tumour.
The study also found several genes that regulate cell differentiation or inhibit tumour development and are silenced in AT/RT together with increased DNA methylation.
“These results will provide deeper insights into the development of AT/RTs and their malignancy. In the future, the results will help to accelerate the discovery of new treatments for this aggressive brain tumour,” says senior author Docent Kirsi Rautajoki from Tampere University.
A survey conducted in the UK found that people with severe to profound hearing loss who were eligible for cochlear implants were less likely to be referred if they lived in deprived areas and were male.
The study, published in PLOS Medicine, was carried out to determine the rates at which people in the UK with hearing loss were getting correctly referred for implants under the NHS, and where disparities might exist. Referrals were to be made on the basis of meeting pure tone audiometric threshold criteria.
Of 6171 participants in the survey who underwent the pure tone test and already did not have a cochlear implant, only 38% were informed of their eligibility and a mere 9% were actually referred for assessment.
Participants were less likely to be referred if they lived in more economically deprived areas and also within London, were male or were older. In addition to these factors, living in more remote areas, and being Black or Asian also reduced the likelihood of being informed of eligibility.
Lower odds of referrals in economically deprived areas is in line with data from both public and private healthcare sectors in Australia and the U.S.
The researchers also found that the presence of a “cochlear implant champion” increased the likelihood of discussions around cochlear implants but not referrals. That males were less likely to be referred or informed to were interpreted as stemming from men’s differences in health-seeking behaviour compared to women.
Limitations included the observational nature of the study, reliance on accurate documentation of the referring service, and potential underrepresentation of certain demographic groups.
Previous studies have questioned whether gut microbe imbalances and vitamin D deficiency may be linked to schizophrenia. New research published in Neuropsychopharmacology Reports now indicates that taking probiotics plus vitamin D supplements may improve cognitive function in individuals with the disease.
For the study, 70 adults with schizophrenia were randomised to take a placebo or probiotic supplements plus 400 IU vitamin D daily for 12 weeks. Severity of the disease and cognitive function were evaluated by tests called the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) and the 30-point Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), respectively.
A total of 69 patients completed the study. The MoCA score increased by 1.96 units in the probiotic-containing supplement group compared with the placebo group. Also, the percentage of patients with MoCA scores of 26 or higher (indicating normal cognition) rose significantly in the intervention group. Between-group differences in PANSS scores were not significant.
“Probiotics may be a novel way to treat mental disorders by regulating gut microbiota,” said corresponding author Gita Sadighi, MD, of the University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences, in Iran.
In a recent paper published in the journalEnvironmental Health Perspectives, University of New Mexico researchers found that microplastics – released by the breakdown of plastics in the environment – are having a significant impact on human digestive pathways, making their way from the gut and into the tissues of the kidney, liver and brain.
Eliseo Castillo, PhD, an associate professor in the Division of Gastroenterology & Hepatology in the UNM School of Medicine’s Department of Internal Medicine and an expert in mucosal immunology, is leading the charge at UNM on microplastic research.
“Over the past few decades, microplastics have been found in the ocean, in animals and plants, in tap water and bottled water,” Castillo, says. “They appear to be everywhere.”
Scientists estimate that people ingest 5 grams of microplastic particles each week on average – equivalent to the weight of a credit card.
While other researchers are helping to identify and quantify ingested microplastics, Castillo and his team focus on what the microplastics are doing inside the body, specifically to the gastrointestinal (GI) tract and to the gut immune system.
Over a four-week period, Castillo, postdoctoral fellow Marcus Garcia, PharmD, and other UNM researchers exposed mice to microplastics in their drinking water. The amount was equivalent to the quantity of microplastics humans are believed to ingest each week.
Microplastics had migrated out of the gut into the tissues of the liver, kidney and even the brain, the team found. The study also showed the microplastics changed metabolic pathways in the affected tissues.
“We could detect microplastics in certain tissues after the exposure,” Castillo says. “That tells us it can cross the intestinal barrier and infiltrate into other tissues.”
Castillo says he’s also concerned about the accumulation of the plastic particles in the human body. “These mice were exposed for four weeks,” he says. “Now, think about how that equates to humans, if we’re exposed from birth to old age.”
The healthy laboratory animals used in this study showed changes after brief microplastic exposure, Castillo says. “Now imagine if someone has an underlying condition, and these changes occur, could microplastic exposure exacerbate an underlying condition?”
He has previously found that microplastics are also impacting macrophages. In a 2021 paper published in Cell Biology & Toxicology, Castillo and other UNM researchers found that when macrophages encountered and ingested microplastics, their function was altered and they released inflammatory molecules.
“It is changing the metabolism of the cells, which can alter inflammatory responses,” Castillo says. “During intestinal inflammation – states of chronic illness such as ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease, which are both forms of inflammatory bowel disease – these macrophages become more inflammatory and they’re more abundant in the gut.”
The next phase of Castillo’s research, which is being led by postdoctoral fellow Sumira Phatak, PhD, will explore how diet is involved in microplastic uptake.
“Everyone’s diet is different,” he says. “So, what we’re going to do is give these laboratory animals a high-cholesterol/high-fat diet, or high-fibre diet, and they will be either exposed or not exposed to microplastics. The goal is to try to understand if diet affects the uptake of microplastics into our body.”
Castillo says one of his PhD students, Aaron Romero, is also working to understand why there is a change in the gut microbiota. “Multiple groups have shown microplastics change the microbiota, but how it changes the microbiota hasn’t been addressed.”
Castillo hopes that his research will help uncover the potential impacts microplastics are having to human health and that it will help spur changes to how society produces and filtrates plastics.
Colourised electron micrograph of Treponema pallidum, the bacteria that cause syphilis. Several spiral-shaped bacteria have been highlighted in gold. Credit: NIAID
By Biénne Huisman for Spotlight
Scientists worldwide are sounding the alarm at the return of syphilis, describing the comeback of the easily preventable infection as a huge public health failing – as an effective vaccine remains elusive.
Syphilis, one of the oldest known diseases, is making a resurgence worldwide. Top global scientists described this as a public health crisis and failure, given that the sexually transmitted infection (STI) – which can have dire and fatal consequences especially for newborn babies – is curable with early treatment.
The return of syphilis was under discussion at the 2024 Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) where scientists, clinicians, and public health advocates gathered in Denver in March.
Addressing delegates in the Colorado Convention Centre, Professor Khalil Ghanem of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, noted a paucity of data – while syphilis continues to increase with “clinicians caring for patients with complex clinical presentations”. Ghanem was pointing out that there is little systematic information on how to manage cases of advanced syphilis, like neurosyphilis (syphilis in the central nervous system) and ocular syphilis (syphilis in the eyes).
Among some medical practitioners, syphilis is known as “the great imitator” due to its variable clinical manifestations that can mimic other diseases. In its severe forms, it can cause chronic multiple organ damage in adults. The infection can also be passed on from a mother to her baby during pregnancy resulting in congenital syphilis, causing premature birth, miscarriage, stillbirth, and birth defects. In most cases, however, the bacterial infection is transmitted sexually. Transmission can be prevented through the correct use of condoms.
Epidemiologist Alex de Voux, from the University of Cape Town, moderated a session on syphilis at CROI. Speaking to Spotlight between sessions, an impassioned De Voux said the return of syphilis is “a failure of healthcare systems (in South Africa and abroad) – because we have the tools, we know how to test for it, and we know how to treat it”.
She added: “The most extreme outcomes of congenital syphilis are stillbirths and neonatal deaths. We don’t even really understand the extent of longer term outcomes: neurological complications, skeletal deformations, impaired mental health development… And all these significant complications arise from an easily preventable infection. Remember, we use penicillin, which has been around for ages. The treatment hasn’t changed in all this time.”
Figures presented at CROI include from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States, reporting a 76% increase in syphilis cases between 2013 and 2017. The WHO estimates that 7.1 million people between 15 and 49 years old were infected with syphilis in 2020. (See a WHO fact sheet on syphilis here.)
In 2018, at least 33 927 cases of syphilis were reported in 29 European Union member states, as recorded by the European Surveillance System (TESSy), at a rate of seven cases per 100 000 population. The reported syphilis rates were nine times higher in men than in women; showing a peak onset age of 25 to 45 years, in men.
Syphilis and HIV
One study presented at the conference surveyed 20 000 MSM (men who have sex with men) across ten cities in India, noting dramatic increases in syphilis in every city. It found syphilis was most prevalent in older MSM, pointing to a need for STI control efforts in this population. “Among people living with HIV, syphilis infection was associated with elevated (HIV) viral loads, raising concerns for transmission of HIV,” the study authors wrote.
Another study conducted in Cologne in Germany investigated 60 patients co-infected with syphilis and acute HIV. The study cites “rising co-infection rates and the unique interaction between these two sexually transmitted infections. Syphilis enhances HIV transmission and acquisition, while HIV accelerates the progression of syphilis…”
An ancient condition, the oldest artistic representation of syphilis is considered to be on a Peruvian jug dating back to the 16th century, depicting a mother suffering from syphilis holding a child. Famous people who had syphilis include Oscar Wild and Friedrich Nietzsche. [Read about the history of syphilis here]. Infections dropped sharply with the availability of penicillin in the 1940s.
However, over the past two decades scientists have reported an alarming spike in cases. This has been attributed by some to a drop in condom use. The reasons for a decrease in condom use is not clearly understood – one possible factor is a false sense of security given lower HIV transmission rates, effective HIV treatment, and the availability of HIV transmission prevention in the form of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). PrEP contains a combination of two antiretroviral medicines which are highly effective at preventing HIV infection when taken as prescribed by someone not living with HIV, while not offering protection against other STIs like syphilis. Access to condoms may also be a factor. As Spotlight recently reported, the number of condoms distributed by the South African government has decreased dramatically over the last five years.
Sex partners
One study presented at CROI found: “The risk factors associated with acquired syphilis are sexual behaviour, serosorting (a strategy that involves selecting sexual partners of the same HIV status) among people living with HIV, multiple sexual partners, the use of PrEP to compensate for HIV risk behaviour, and social networking sites or mobile device apps to find sex partners.”
At the syphilis session at CROI, Dr Angélica Espinosa Miranda, STI unit coordinator at the Brazilian Ministry of Health, presented a talk titled “The Burgeoning Epidemic of Congenital Syphilis”. She emphasised “the underdiagnosis of syphilis in pregnancy, especially in regions with limited healthcare access”.
Miranda’s statement resonates with De Voux’s research in South Africa, which found congenital syphilis cases to be gravely underreported in the country. Congenital syphilis is a notifiable condition in South Africa, meaning that if a doctor delivers a baby believed to be infected they are required by law to report it to the National Institute For Communicable Diseases. De Voux’s study relays how reported congenital syphilis cases in South Africa’s healthcare system between January 2020 and June 2022 – 36 cases for every 100 000 live births – were at least half the figure estimated by WHO scientists – thus bolstering the hypothesis that there is a high number of undiagnosed syphilis in South Africa.
Penicillin treatment
In her talk, Miranda added that ensuring that infected pregnant women receive timely and appropriate penicillin treatment is critical to preventing congenital syphilis. “Penicillin is the only effective treatment during pregnancy,” she said. “However challenges remain, such as limited healthcare access and penicillin shortages in some countries.”
When penicillin cannot be used (due to unavailability in a country or allergy in a patient) the WHO’s STI guidelines suggest using doxycycline 100mg twice daily orally for 30 days.
Penicillin shortages are a problem worldwide, and in South Africa too. “South Africa has also been affected by shortages of penicillin,” says De Voux. “In fact, often they will make sure that they keep stocks and prioritise pregnant women. So that means that sometimes other people who are infected with syphilis will get treated with something that’s much more burdensome. Instead of having penicillin injections, they will take oral tablets – doxycycline – which has these gastrointestinal side effects, so an upset stomach. You have to try minimise the side effects with f ood.”
Miranda stressed the need to invest in developing new strategies – antibiotics apart from penicillin – to treat syphilis. Meanwhile, epidemiologists agree that a vaccine for syphilis is important but that this scientific solution remains elusive.
Of the nearly 20 million women who participated in a U.S. national health survey, one-third reported migraines during menstruation. The analysis was conducted by researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center and Pfizer, Inc., which makes a migraine medication.
Because of the underuse of medications to help treat or prevent menstrual migraines, investigators wanted to understand how common menstrual migraines were and which groups of women could most benefit from potential therapies. The study, presented April 16, at the American Academy of Neurology 2024 Annual Meeting in Denver, also revealed the most common medications taken by those women seeking to prevent menstrual migraines.
“The first step in helping a woman with menstrual migraine is making a diagnosis; the second part is prescribing a treatment; and the third part is finding treatments patients are satisfied with and remain on to reduce disability and improve quality of life,” says the study author, Jessica Ailani, MD, professor of clinical neurology at Georgetown University School of Medicine.
The researchers used the 2021 U.S. National Health and Wellness Survey to analyse responses from women who reported their current migraine treatments, frequency and disabilities via the Migraine Disability Assessment Test (MIDAS), a five-question survey. A migraine headache can cause severe throbbing pain or a pulsing sensation, usually on one side of the head. It’s often accompanied by nausea, vomiting, and extreme sensitivity to light and sound.
“Discrepancies in the incidence of who gets migraine attacks associated with menses is likely due to premenopausal women having more regular menstrual cycles and thus more menstrual-related migraines,” says Ailani, also director of the MedStar Georgetown Headache Center at Medstar Georgetown University Hospital. “Additionally, as women move into their 40’s and become peri-menopausal, there tends to be a greater shift through the month in hormone levels also leading to frequent migraine attacks.”
The survey found that for all women during their menstrual periods, migraine attacks occurred as frequently as 4.5 times and that monthly only migraine headaches lasted 8.4 days, on average; 56.2 % of women had moderate-to-severe migraine-specific disabilities that ranked highest on the MIDAS scale.
When looking at treatments women in the survey used to help control their migraine symptoms, 42.4% used over-the-counter medications while 48.6% used prescription medications. Of the 63.9 % of women who used migraine treatments for acute symptoms, the most commonly used were triptans, a class of drugs developed in the 1990s to quiet overactive nerves associated with migraines and cluster headaches.
Sara’s story
Sara, a 38 year old mother of two, says her migraines are predictably and consistently worse during her period.
“It definitely disrupts my ability to go about my normal activities including at work,” Sara says. “I’m pretty lucky that I’m generally responsive to prescription medication, but I often still have to lie down for an hour or so while the medicine kicks in.”
Sara is being treated preventatively for migraines with Botox. She says over the past couple of months, she’s had a couple of migraines outside of when she gets her period, but that the headaches are definitely worse during menstruation.
“While I had my last period, I had a migraine every day for a week,” Sara says. “It’s starkly different [during menstruation].”
Prevention possibilities
Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) are sometimes used as preventive medications for women with regular menstrual periods. In this study, 21.1% of women reported use of any migraine prevention medications or therapies.
“Preventive treatments are used less frequently than acute treatment for migraine,” Alaini said. “In my opinion, this is because preventive therapy is a long-term commitment by both a woman and her clinician to improving the disease process. Migraine is a life-long brain disease without a cure, and the goal of preventive therapy is to reduce disease burden and improve quality of life. Unfortunately, newer disease-specific treatments are costly, so generic older treatments are often used and come with greater side effects.”
Next steps
The researcher’s next steps involve looking at larger databases to see if they can mimic findings on a global scale. They want to determine if women with menstrual-related migraine are frequently turning to non-migraine treatments as was seen in around 53% of their current study group.
“As a headache specialist in the U.S., I know I can do better for women in my clinic, but what can be done for the millions of women who don’t get into a headache clinic? That is our true next step,” says Ailani. “If you have migraines related to your menstrual cycle, discuss this with your gynaecologist or neurologist. There are treatments that can help and if the first treatment tried does not work, do not give up.”
