A validation study of an Italian version of the ID Migraine: preliminary results.

Migraine is a highly prevalent and disabling disease that is substantially undiagnosed in primary care. Recently, the ID Migraine, a self-administered questionnaire, was shown to be a valid and reliable screener for migraine in primary care in the USA. To validate an Italian version of the ID Migraine, we planned a multicentric study, evaluating at least 220 patients affected by various form of headache. The responses to the questionnaire were compared with the diagnosis of headache made by a headache specialist blind to the result of the questionnaire. Sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative predictive values for migraine were calculated. The statistical analysis on 140 patients now examined showed a very good performance of the ID Migraine with high sensitivity: 0.94 (95% CI: 0.89-0.95), specificity: 0.70 (95% CI: 0.54-0.86) and positive predictive value: 0.89 (0.82-0.95). If confirmed, these results would establish ID Migraine as a valid screening instrument for migraine in Italian headache patients and warrant further investigation in primary care to assess the validity of this ID screener in Italian population.

Relationship between clinical variables and cognitive performances in migraineurs with and without aura.

Conflicting data on cognitive defects in migraine could be explained by differences in the clinical variables of the populations studied. We investigated 21 patients with migraine with aura and 24 with migraine without aura, diagnosed according to the International Headache Society criteria. The patients were submitted to a comprehensive battery of neuropsychological tests and grouped according to attack frequency and side of pain. Attack frequency was not associated with significant differences in any of the tasks, while location of pain was found to be significantly related to poorer performance on both the immediate and delayed recall of Rey Complex Figure in migraineurs both with and without aura, and a significant relationship between side of pain and number of clusters in the second trial of California Verbal Learning Test was found only in migraine with aura patients. The finding of worse performances in patients with right-sided pain seems to support a right hemisphere dysfunction hypothesis.