Aim:

Migraine is one of the most common causes of headache that reduce quality of life. Hyperintense lesions on brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) are more common in migraine compared to normal population. Red cell distribution width (RDW), which indicates the size of erythrocytes, is an increased parameter due to inflammatory and ineffective erythropoiesis due to neurohumoral activation. In this article, we compared the RDW levels patient with and without migraine-related hyperintense lesions on brain MRI. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between RDW and MRI lesions in patients with migraine.

Materials and Methods:

Patients were divided into two groups as with and without migraine-related hyperintense lesions on brain MRI. The age, sex, duration of migraine, frequency of migraine, aura, smoking, family history, hemoglobin (Hb) and RDW values of patients were recorded, retrospectively.

Results:

The group included patients with hyperintense lesion on brain MRI 43 (38F, 5M), the group of patients without lesions 35 (30F, 5M). Hb values were higher in male and RDW values were higher in female. There were no significant differences between with and without migraine-related lesions with respect to Hb and RDW. There was a poor negative correlation between Hb and RDW. There were no differences between patient with and without smoking, aura and family history with respect RDW.

Conclusion:

In our study, RDW values were not an ideal biomarker for the prediction of migraine-related brain MRI lesions. This study is an important one as it investigated RDW in patients with and without migraine-related brain MRI lesions.

Keywords: Red cell distribution width, migraine-related brain MRI lesions, biomarker