Increased T1w MRI-based brain age in chronic migraine patients

Abstract

SynopsisBrain-age is an emerging neuroimaging biomarker that represents the aging status of the brain using machine learning techniques from MRI data. It has been successfully applied to the study of different neurological and psychiatric conditions. We hypothesize that patients with migraine may show an increased brain age gap (difference between the age estimated from the MRI data and the chronological age). After building a brain age model from 2,781 healthy subjects, we tested this hypothesis on a dataset with 210 healthy controls and migraine patients. Results showed an increased brain age in chronic migraine patients with respect to healthy controls.Main Findings-Patients with chronic migraine had a statistically significant increased brain age gap with respect to healthy controls (2.27 vs -0.27 years).-No significant differences were found between episodic migraine patients and healthy controls.PurposeMigraine is one of the most common neurological disorders, with a higher prevalence among women, and causes a huge societal and economic burden1. Chronic migraine (CM) patients suffer headaches for no less than 15 days per month for more than three months, with at least eight days of having migrainous symptoms. Patients with episodic migraine (EM), on the other hand, suffer headaches for less than 15 days per month2. Different studies have shown differences in the brain of migraine patients with respect to those of healthy controls (HC) in terms of morphological, connectivity, and metabolic features3,4,5. However, the pathophysiology of migraine is still unclear. To contribute to its understanding, the Brain Age framework has emerged as a neuroimaging technique that predicts the individual age (“brain age”) employing MRI data. To determine the Brain Age Gap Estimation (BrainAGE)6, the predicted and real chronological ages are compared, representing a positive value accelerated brain aging, as previously reported in several disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis, or diabetes type II7,8,9. The aim of this study is to develop a BrainAGE model and estimate the aging status of the brain in patients with migraine.