Migraine with aura is a highly prevalent disorder involving transient neurological disturbances associated with migraine headache. While the pathophysiology is incompletely understood, findings from clinical and basic science studies indicate a potential key role of the thalamus in the mechanisms underlying migraine with and without aura. Two recent, clinic-based MRI studies investigated the volumes of individual thalamic nuclei in migraine patients with and without aura using two different data analysis methods. Both studies found differences of thalamic nuclei volumes between patients and healthy controls, but the results of the studies were not consistent.

Here, we investigated whether migraine with aura is associated with changes in thalamic volume by analysing MRI data obtained from a large, cross-sectional population-based study which specifically included women with migraine with aura (N = 156), unrelated migraine-free matched controls (N = 126), and migraine aura-free co-twins (N = 29) identified from the Danish Twin Registry. We used two advanced, validated analysis methods to assess the volume of the thalamus and its nuclei; the MAGeT Brain Algorithm and a recently developed FreeSurfer-based method based on a probabilistic atlas of the thalamic nuclei combining ex vivo MRI and histology. These approaches were very similar to the methods used in each of the two previous studies.

Between-group comparisons were corrected for potential effects of age, educational level, BMI, smoking, alcohol, and hypertension using a linear mixed model. Further, we used linear mixed models and visual inspection of data to assess relations between migraine aura frequency and thalamic nuclei volumes in patients. In addition, we performed paired t-tests to compare volumes of twin pairs (N = 29) discordant for migraine with aura. None of our analyses showed any between-group differences in volume of the thalamus or of individual thalamic nuclei. Our results indicate that the pathophysiology of migraine with aura does not involve alteration of thalamic volume.

具有先兆的偏头痛是一种高度流行的疾病，涉及与偏头痛相关的短暂神经系统疾病。尽管对病理生理的理解还不完全，但临床和基础科学研究的发现表明，丘脑在有或没有先兆的偏头痛的潜在机制中起着潜在的关键作用。最近的两项基于临床的MRI研究使用两种不同的数据分析方法，对有先兆和没有先兆的偏头痛患者的单个丘脑核体积进行了研究。两项研究均发现患者和健康对照组的丘脑核体积不同，但研究结果不一致。

在这里，我们通过分析一项基于大型横断面人群研究的MRI数据，调查了具有先兆偏头痛的患者是否与丘脑容量的变化有关，该研究特别包括具有先兆偏头痛的妇女（N = 156），无无关偏头痛的女性对照（N = 126），以及从丹麦双胞胎注册处鉴定的无偏头痛先兆双绞痛（N = 29）。我们使用了两种经过验证的高级分析方法来评估丘脑及其细胞核的体积。MAGeT脑算法和最近开发的基于FreeSurfer的方法，该方法基于丘脑核的概率图集，结合了离体MRI和组织学。这些方法与之前两项研究中使用的方法非常相似。

使用线性混合模型，对年龄，教育水平，BMI，吸烟，酒精和高血压的潜在影响进行了组间比较的校正。此外，我们使用线性混合模型和数据的视觉检查来评估偏头痛先兆频率与患者丘脑核体积之间的关系。此外，我们进行了配对t检验，比较了偏头痛与先兆不一致的双胞胎对（N = 29）的体积。我们的分析均未显示丘脑或单个丘脑核的体积存在组间差异。我们的结果表明偏头痛先兆的病理生理学并不涉及丘脑容积的改变。