Karsan, Nazia, Goadsby, Peter J · Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2021 · DOI
This review examines why migraine sufferers often experience fatigue, mood changes, and cognitive difficulties—symptoms that can occur hours or days before a headache arrives. Rather than being separate diseases, the authors suggest these symptoms may stem from shared brain chemistry problems in people with migraines, similar to what happens in ME/CFS and depression. The study proposes that migraine is fundamentally a disorder of how the brain processes sensory information, not just a headache condition.
This paper is highly relevant to ME/CFS because it proposes that fatigue, mood disturbance, and sensory sensitivity may arise from shared neurobiological mechanisms rather than separate diseases. For ME/CFS patients who also experience migraines, understanding these overlapping brain systems could inform more integrated treatment approaches and help legitimize fatigue and cognitive symptoms as core neurological features rather than secondary manifestations.
This review does not establish causation or definitively prove that migraine and ME/CFS share identical biological mechanisms—it presents a hypothesis based on existing literature. The study does not provide new experimental evidence or distinguish whether shared symptoms reflect true biological overlap or simply similar phenotypic presentations from different underlying causes. It also does not prove that current migraine treatments would be effective for ME/CFS or vice versa.
About the PEM badge: “PEM required” means post-exertional malaise was an explicit required diagnostic criterion for participant inclusion in this study — not that PEM was studied, observed, or discussed. Studies using criteria that do not require PEM (e.g. Fukuda, Oxford) are tagged “PEM not required”. How the atlas works →
Spotted an error in this entry? Report it →