Chronic headaches asociated with autonomic, interoceptive disorders. Clinical psyhological trial.

Abstract

Introduction: Interoception describes the perception of symptoms and sensations that originate within the body. Interoceptive perception of internal change functions as the first stage in the process of symptom detection. Interoceptive accuracy is also relevant for specific clinical conditions, there is evidence that interoceptive accuracy is higher for sufferers of anxiety disorders and depression the same for migraine. Migraine is a chronic neurological disorder characterized by recurrent moderate to severe headaches often in association with a number of autonomic nervous system symptoms. Purpose and Objectives: Our goal was to show the impact of the chronic migraine on autonomic dysfunction and perception disorders - interoception and exteroception, to get correlation with affective state (anxiety and depression ) and compare perceptive disorders in pacients with chronic migraine and diabetes mellitus. Materials and methods: In our study we examined 70 women: 20 with chronic migraine, 10 healthy women and 40 with diabetes mellitus. For investigation we used the following questionnaires: 1) Questionnaire for chronic headaches in pacients with chronic migraine; 2) PVM2 to determine neurovegetative disorders; 3) An additional scale that reprezents data extracted from PVM2 for perceptive processes: interoception and exteroception; 4) BODY PERCEPTION QUESTIONNAIRE, byStephen W. Porges, shortned to 50 answers; and 5) to determine anxiety and depression we used Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale - HADS . Rezults: In our study pacients with migraine were more symptomatic in com paration with other and symtoms were more expressive, sometimes due to pain. There was a great statistic significans (p<0,005***) on scales: cardiovascular disfunction and interoception. Pacients with migraine were also more depressive and has the highest level of anxiety (p <0.05*). (Martin et all, 1967) consider that migraine may mask depression and anxiety, or other emotional disorders, led to the idea that there are a consequence of the migraine more that a trigger factor. Coclusion: In our study we found that chronic migraine has a great impact on autonomic nervous system. It decreases the sensitivity threshold and so increase both the interoceptive and exteroceptive processes. The values are higher even then in patients with diabetes mellitus.