One of medicine’s biggest mysteries – the reason why women are two to three times as likely as men to suffer from migraine headaches – may be on the verge of a solution.

Research presented at the International Headache Congress shows that the brains of women and men with migraine are radically different. The differences are so profound that some scientists insist that the female and male migraines are two separate and distinct disorders, the Newsmax Health reported.

Until recently, most researchers suggested that the usual suspect – female hormones – might be responsible for the higher prevalence of migraine in women. But they had no solid evidence to support this theory.

Dr. Nasim Maleki, medical physicist at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School and her colleagues decided to conduct MRI scans of the brains of women and men with migraines.

The researchers found that women with migraines have a significantly different brain structure than either their male counterparts or people who don’t get migraines.

For example, they have thicker gray matter in two areas: the posterior insula, which is involved in pain processing; and the precuneus, which may be the seat of a person’s consciousness or sense of self.

In men with migraines, there was a more intense response to pain in the nucleus accumbens, an area of the brain that is part of the reward circuitry and is extensively studied in addiction research.

Meanwhile, pharmaceutical companies should stop the practice of testing new migraine drugs on male rodents only. 

In the near future there may be new treatments based on the brain differences discovered by Dr. Maleki and her colleagues, which would give both sexes a better chance at real relief.