Abstract
Migraine is a typically unilateral disorder in adulthood; however, the reasons for painful lateralization have been little investigated. The possible influence of manual dominance was suggested. We aimed to investigate the localization of pain in migraine attacks in right-handed and left-handed subjects. The retrospective study collected 546 patients with migraine aged between 16 and 65 years, reporting the manual dominance to the Edinburgh test. We included 466 right-handed and 80 left-handed subjects with migraine. We registered 4215 unilateral painful attacks. The right-handers had 3412 unilateral episodes; 62.8% of the attacks were characterized by pain on the right side and 37.2% by pain on the left. The left-handed subjects reported 803 unilateral pain with 63.5% of unilateral pain episodes on the left side and 36.5% of attacks with lateralized pain on the right (p < 0.001). Our data suggest that manual dominance may influence the side of pain lateralization in migraine.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References
Goadsby PJ, Holland PR (2019) Pathophysiology of migraine: an update. Neurol Clin 37:651–671
Lipscombe SL, Prior T (2002) Is there any relationship between handedness and unilateral headache in migraine? Cephalalgia 22:146–148
Avnon Y, Nitzan M, Sprecher E, Rogowski Z, Yarnitsky D (2003) Different patterns of parasympathetic activation in uni- and bilateral subjects with migraine. Brain 126:1660–1670
Fasmer OB, Akiskal HS, Hugdahl K, Oedegaard KJ (2008) Non-right-handedness is associated with migraine and soft bipolarity in patients with mood disorders. J Affect Disord 108:217–224
Olesen J (2004) The International classification of headache disorders, 2nd edn (ICDH-II). Cephalalgia suppl 1:8–160
Oldfield RC (1971) The assessment and analysis of thandedness: the Edinburgh inventory. Neuropsychologia 9:97–113
Geschwind N, Behan P (1982) Left-handedness: association with immune disease, migraine, and developmental learning disorder. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 79:5097–5100
Messinger HB, Messinger MI, Kudrow L, Kudrow LV (1994) Handedness and headache. Cephalalgia 14:64–67
Aygül R, Dane S, Ulvi H (2005) Handedness, eyedness, and crossed hand-eye dominance in male and female patients with migraine with and without aura: a pilot study. Percept Mot Skills 100:1137–1142
Biehl K, Frese A, Marziniak M, Husstedt IW, Evers S (2008) Migraine and left-handedness are not associated. A new case-control study and meta-analysis. Cephalalgia 28:553–557
McManus C (2019) Half a century of handedness research: myths, truths; fictions, facts; backwards, but mostly forwards. Brain Neurosci Adv, Prof Antonio Federico 3:1–10
De Gennaro L, Cristiani R, Bertini M, Curcio G, Ferrara M, Fratello F, Romei V, Rossini PM (2004) Handedness is mainly associated with an asymmetry of corticospinal excitability and not of transcallosal inhibition. Clin Neurophysiol 115:1305–1312
Burstein R, Jakubowski M (2005) Unitary hypothesis for multiple triggers of the pain and strain of migraine. J Comp Neurol 493:9–14
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Ethics approval
According to local ethical policies, no formal approval by the Hospital Ethics Committee was necessary or required. All the data were part of the patient’s standard medical files and they were collected according to the principles expressed in the Declaration of Helsinki.
Informed consent
Written informed consent was obtained from all patients.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare conflict of interest.
Additional information
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
La Pegna, G.B., Quatrosi, G., Vetri, L. et al. Migraine and handedness. Neurol Sci 42, 2965–2968 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10072-021-05111-7
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10072-021-05111-7