Retinal Nerve Fibre Layer Thickness of Migraine Patients with or without White Matter Lesions

ABSTRACT

The aim of this study was to determine whether retinal nerve fibre layer (RNFL) thickness is correlated with cerebral white matter lesions (WML) in migraine patients. Forty migraine and 40 healthy subjects were included in this study. The difference in RNFL thickness between the control and a migraine group with WML and a migraine group without WML were investigated using analysis of variance (ANOVA). A Tukey post hoc test was conducted to determine from which group the difference originated. Lower RNFL thicknesses were observed in the migraine patient group where WML was detected using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), compared with the control group and with the migraine group with no WML. Statistically significant difference was found between the three groups in terms of RNFL thickness. Although there was a statistically significant difference between the control and the migraine group with WML detected with MRI, no statistically significant difference was found in terms of RNFL thickness between the control and the migraine group with no WML related to Tukey post hoc test. Moreover, there was a statistically significant difference between migraine patients with WML and patients without WML in terms of retinal nerve fibre layer thickness. The results indicate that reduction in RNFL detected via optical coherence tomography may be related to cerebral WML in migraine patients. Further studies by neurologists and ophthalmologists are necessary to determine the clinical relevance of the relation between RNFL and cerebral WML.

KEYWORDS:

• Migraine
• optical coherence tomography
• retinal nerve fibre layer
• white matter lesion

Acknowledgements

This study was presented as an oral presentation in Turkish Ophthalmology 2014 Annual Meeting.

I am indebted to neurologist Demet Aygun, MD, for evaluating the migraine patients and to the magnetic resonance specialist radiologist Ergün Deniz, MD, for help in clinically reviewing magnetic resonance images.

Declaration of interest

The author reports no conflicts of interest. The author alone is responsible for the content and writing of the article.