Duration of migraine disease correlates with amplitude and habituation of event-related potentials

BACKGROUND: Duration of a migraine disease and hypervigilance are factors which possibly enable the transformation from episodic into chronic migraine. To elucidate this assumption, attentional parameters were measured by recording contingent negative variation (CNV) and correlated with the individual duration of migraine disease. PATIENTS AND METHODS: A total of 28 patients (episodic migraine with or without aura) were compared with 16 healthy controls. CNV analysis included amplitude and habituation calculation. Data were correlated with the individual duration of the migraine disease. The migraine group was divided into two groups based on a median split (short vs long lasting) which were compared by t-tests. RESULTS: Migraine patients produce higher CNV amplitudes than controls. Moreover, migraineurs showed dishabituation while habituation was seen in controls. There was a Pearson correlation coefficient of r = -0.767 between duration of disease and early component of CNV. Patients with long-lasting disease showed lower dishabituation by a higher intercept than patients with short-lasting disease. CONCLUSION: The correlation between duration of disease and attentional parameters and the changing dishabituation can be interpreted as an enhancement in preactivation level in patients with long-lasting migraine. Maybe this change is a prerequisite for transformation into chronic migraine.