Neurological sciences : official journal of the Italian Neurological Society and of the Italian Society of Clinical Neurophysiology
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Migraine patients may present altered values of the parameters related to their cerebral circulation. The non-invasive assessment of the autoregulation of such patients can be helpful in investigating the causes of migraine. We developed a joint analysis protocol based on transcranial Doppler (TCD) and near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) for assessing cerebral autoregulation. ⋯ Strong differences in the CBFV were observable during the BH task: migraineurs showed a smaller BH index than controls (0.83+/-0.55% vs. 1.29+/-0.71%; p<0.005) and a reduced increase of the oxy-Hb (migraineurs: 0.033+/-0.019 micromol/l/s; healthy: 0.055+/-0.037 micromol/l/s; p<0.01). Also, we found a different haemoglobin balancing during the BH phase between migraineurs and controls, revealing that migraineurs do not show a marked vasodilation as functional response to the CO(2) increase. We propose this joint analysis protocol to assess cerebral autoregulation of migraine patients, and suggest NIRS as a low-cost, easy, reliable and fast technique to deeply investigate cerebral coupling deregulations.