David Baxter PhD
Late Founder
Tinted lenses relieve migraines, scans show
CBC News
May 26, 2011
Migraine sufferers feel better when wearing precision-tinted lenses, a brain scanning study shows.
The special lenses are sometimes prescribed to treat migraine symptoms but scientists did not know why they work.
Now researchers from Michigan State University have used functional magnetic resonance imaging or fMRI to look for abnormal brain activity as people with migraines viewed intense patterns.
Wearing tinted lenses reduced the effect considerably, Jie Huang and his colleagues said in Thursday's online of the journal Cephalalgia.
In the experiment, lenses were specifically tuned for 11 people who frequently suffered from migraines. The patients' lenses were then tested on migraine-free controls. Two other pairs of grey and coloured lenses with slightly different properties were also used as controls.
In the fMRI screening, participants were exposed to a range of striped patterns that can give the illusion of movement, shape and colour that can trigger various levels of discomfort and distortion.
About 40 per cent of migraine participants reported some degree of relief with all the lenses. That jumped to 70 per cent when using the precision-tinted lenses to look at the stressful stripes, the researchers found.
None of the lenses made a difference for non-stressful stripe patterns.
"The specific characteristics of activation we recorded could provide a potential biomarker for identifying those migraine patients suffering visual cortical hyper-activation," said Huang, a radiology professor.
"This biomarker could prove useful not only for further evaluation of tinted lenses but also for studying the effectiveness of drugs to prevent migraine headaches."
CBC News
May 26, 2011
Migraine sufferers feel better when wearing precision-tinted lenses, a brain scanning study shows.
The special lenses are sometimes prescribed to treat migraine symptoms but scientists did not know why they work.
Now researchers from Michigan State University have used functional magnetic resonance imaging or fMRI to look for abnormal brain activity as people with migraines viewed intense patterns.
Wearing tinted lenses reduced the effect considerably, Jie Huang and his colleagues said in Thursday's online of the journal Cephalalgia.
In the experiment, lenses were specifically tuned for 11 people who frequently suffered from migraines. The patients' lenses were then tested on migraine-free controls. Two other pairs of grey and coloured lenses with slightly different properties were also used as controls.
In the fMRI screening, participants were exposed to a range of striped patterns that can give the illusion of movement, shape and colour that can trigger various levels of discomfort and distortion.
About 40 per cent of migraine participants reported some degree of relief with all the lenses. That jumped to 70 per cent when using the precision-tinted lenses to look at the stressful stripes, the researchers found.
None of the lenses made a difference for non-stressful stripe patterns.
"The specific characteristics of activation we recorded could provide a potential biomarker for identifying those migraine patients suffering visual cortical hyper-activation," said Huang, a radiology professor.
"This biomarker could prove useful not only for further evaluation of tinted lenses but also for studying the effectiveness of drugs to prevent migraine headaches."
