Objective: Migraine is a common primary headache disease. Studies have supported the presence of neurogenic inflammation in the pathophysiology of migraine. The neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio (NLR) has been used as a marker of inflammation in recent years. Although it has been shown that NLR increases during migraine attacks, there are limited data on chronic migraine (CM) patients. We aimed to evaluate the inflammatory status in CM patients using NLR as a biomarker for inflammation.
Methods: Twenty three migraine patients without aura and 18 age-matched control participants were included. The migraine patients who had more than 15 headache days/month were grouped as having CM. The episodic migraine group included migraine patients who had less than 15 headache days/month. Another grouping was performed according to the total duration of migraine-type headaches. Patients having headaches over 10 years were grouped as long-term (LM) migraine patients, and those having headaches under 10 years were grouped as short-term (SM) migraine patients. The patients were in an interictal state during the evaluations. Demographic information, laboratory results, and definite diagnosis of the headache type of the participants were retrospectively collected from the files. NLR was calculated using the total counts of neutrophils and lymphocytes.
Results: The NLR was similar between the control, episodic, and CM groups. No correlation was found between NLR and the frequency of headaches. The NLR was similar between the SM and LM migraine patients.
Conclusion: There is no evidence of ongoing inflammation, which was evaluated by NLR, in the interictal state of patients with both episodic and CM.