(ANSA) – ROME, MARCH 30 – Even headaches follow the internal clock of our body and each type of headache tends to occur at a precise time: cluster headaches generally appear in the last hours of the night and early in the morning; migraine, on the other hand, occurs more often in the late morning until late afternoon. This is what a group of researchers from the University of Texas discovered in a study published in the journal Neurology.
For the study – a meta-analysis – 72 studies that had previously investigated the relationship between headaches and circadian rhythms were jointly analyzed.
The team found that 71% of cluster headache cases have a link to circadian rhythms: Attacks peak in the last hours of the night to early morning and also occur more frequently in spring and autumn. It has also been found that many of the genes that increase the risk of cluster headache follow circadian rhythms.
Migraine, on the other hand, responds to a circadian pattern in half of the cases. The probability of incurring a migraine attack is higher during the day, between late morning and early evening, while no seasonal phenomena have been observed.
For the researchers, the finding could have clinical implications: “These findings increase the chances for the use of circadian rhythm-based treatments for headache disorders,” study coordinator Mark Joseph Burish said in a statement. “These could include both treatments that respect circadian rhythms, for example by taking medicines at certain times of the day, and treatments that cause circadian changes, which some medicines can do,” he concluded. (HANDLE).
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