Migraine is a prevalent multifactorial neurovascular disease with a high impact on the quality of life, where metabolic processes are expected to play an important role. Whereas there is some (limited) knowledge about what happens during a migraine attack, not much is known about the trigger of a migraine attack.
The aim is to unravel the genetic and non-genetic triggering mechanisms for migraine with the ultimate goal to identify novel treatment targets for migraine prophylactics. The metabolome will be dissected in CSF (and blood/urine) of patients and transgenic migraine mouse models under various intervention regimes (e.g., attack triggers, cortical spreading depression (CSD), pharmacology). In these mouse models, microdialysis will be applied to study the longitudinal extracellular changes in metabolite profiles at positions which have been identified as relevant by fMRI and/or MRS.
The underlying hypothesis is that, because migraine is a paroxysmal brain disorder and CSF is in direct contact with the brain interstitial fluid, biochemical changes in the brains of migraine patients will be (best) reflected in CSF