Glutamate and Migraine
Burak Mutlu1, Ayşe Şiva Acar1, Oytun Erbaş1,2
1ERBAS Institute of Experimental Medicine, Illinois, USA & Gebze, Turkey
2Department of Physiology, Medical Faculty of Demiroğlu Bilim University, Istanbul, Turkey
Keywords: Cortical spreading depression, glutamate, migraine
Abstract
Migraine is a highly prevalent disease, with 4% of the population suffering from it. Although it was previously defined to be a vascular disease, current findings has shown that it is really such a complex neurological disorder. While the physiopathology of this condition, which is more common in women, is still unknown, the trigeminovascular system has supplied valuable data. Thus, migraine phases' clinical effects were correlated to their physiopathology, and the function of elements other than the trigeminovascular system (e.g., the hypothalamus) in migraine was revealed. Glutamate receptors, which are abundantly positioned in the nuclei of the trigeminovascular pathway in the medulla, contribute to the physiopathology of migraine. As a result, glutamate receptor modulators may be useful in the treatment of migraine.
Cite this article as: Mutlu B, Şiva Acar A, Erbaş O. Glutamate and Migraine. JEB Med Sci 2021;2(2):253-260.
The authors declared no conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article.
The authors received no financial support for the research and/or authorship of this article.