MIGRAINE
Pathophysiological background of the disease
Recurrent migraine is a common, debilitating, and highly elusive disorder that is notoriously difficult to treat. The condition is characterized by recurrent, enduring, unilateral, and pulsating headaches often accompanied by nausea, light and sound sensitivity, and sometimes preceded by a period of altered sensory experience (often visual hallucination) called auras. The origin of migraine is argued to be vascular and/or neurogenic but this is still under investigation [81], but the aura symptoms are known to result from a wave of neuron depolarization and subsequent depression propagating across the cortex, whereas the pain results from the activation of the trigeminovascular system and meningeal blood vessels, both through unconfirmed mechanisms [82].