Opinion

Opinião

Dear Editor,

We read with great interest the article published by Joseph Bruno Bidin Brooks and Yara Dadalti Fragoso (Arq Neuropsiquiatr 2013;71,11:862-865) about blink reflex test in patients with chronic migraine¹. In this article, the authors concluded that although It is possible that some patients indeed have alterations in their blink reflex wave patterns, in a large cohort of subjects, those few cases of alteration may be diluted in the pool of normal responses. We think that although the conclusion may be correct, the study should have considered what kind of preventive medication for migraine patients received at the time of blink reflex test. This is important because, it was described that anticonvulsant drugs can alter this test² and this type of medication is often used in migraine. Previous studies on subjects, with conflicting results, have not examined the relationship between parameters of the blink reflex test and type of prophylactic medication for migraine^3,4. We hypothesizes that this is the explanation for those disappointing findings and believe this factor should be analyzed in future studies to draw definitive conclusions about the usefulness of this diagnostic test.

References

• ¹
  Brooks JBB, Fragoso YD. The blink reflex test does not show abnormalities in a large group of patients with chronic migraine. Arq Neuropsiquiatr 2013;71:862-865.
• ²
  Lancman ME, Cristiano E, Golimstok A, Granillo RJ. Effects of monotherapy and polytherapy on the blink reflex in epileptic patients. Epilepsia 1993;34:1085-1088.
• ³
  Avramidis TG, Podikoglou DG, Anastasopoulos IE, Koutroumanidis MA, Papadimitriou AL. Blink reflex in migraine and tension-type headache. Headache 1998;38:691-696.
• ⁴
  Peddireddy A, Wang K, Svensson P, Arendt-Nielsen L. Blink reflexes in chronic tension-type headache patients and healthy controls. Clin Neurophysiol 2009;120:1711-1716.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  Apr 2014

History

• Received
  18 Dec 2013
• Accepted
  08 Jan 2014