Migraine is a recurring headache of moderate to severe intensity that is associated with gastrointestinal, neurologic, and autonomic symptoms. As the most common of the chronic headache disorders, migraine affects 18% of women and 6% of men in the United States. More than one-half of all migraine sufferers report significant disability with the migraine. While the pathophysiology of migraine is not completely understood, there is mounting evidence that migraine sufferers are at an increased risk for cardiovascular disease and other vascular disorders, including angina, myocardial infarction, coronary revascularization, claudication, cardiovascular mortality, and ischemic lesions in the brain. There is also an increased risk of other cardiovascular risk factors, including hypertension, diabetes, and hyperlipidemia. Now, the Journal of the American Medical Association reports in a recent study that migraine is associated with pathologic changes in the cerebellum. Read more →

It is well known that depression results from the combination of many different factors. Environmental effects, such as stressful life events, are a trigger in many patients for the development of major depressive disorder (MDD) and the milder disorder, dysthymia. It is also true that the same major stressors will not produce depressive symptoms in some, pointing to underlying risk factors that make some more susceptible to depression than others. Researchers have attempted to identify a single gene that can be linked to MDD, and while familial clustering of depressive disorders is a common finding, single-gene inheritance patterns are not seen. Instead, patterns suggested that several genes are involved in depression, and a recent research study demonstrated the interactive effects of these genes on the disease. Read more →