Episodic menstrual migraine patients exhibit white matter microstructural changes compared to hormonal controls

Migraine is one of the most prevalent brain disorders worldwide. Although features extracted from diffusion MRI have been suggested to hold potential as disease biomarkers, research outputs remain inconsistent across studies. We investigated voxelwise microstructural alterations in episodic menstrual migraine patients (interictal phase) and appropriate hormonal controls (post-ovulation) by comparing diffusion-tensor and diffusion-kurtosis imaging metrics. Moreover, we extracted histogram measures (median, peak height, width, and value for each metric); and we evaluated their relationship with clinical factors (disease duration, attack frequency and pain intensity). Several metrics revealed significant differences between groups, indicating that they may be potential disease biomarkers.