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. 2021 Jul;42(7):2965-2968.
doi: 10.1007/s10072-021-05111-7. Epub 2021 Feb 6.

Migraine and handedness

Giovanni Battista La Pegna  1 , Giuseppe Quatrosi  2 , Luigi Vetri  2 , Federica Reina  2 , Cristina Galati  2 , Maria Laura Manzo  2 , Giovanna Martina Nocera  2 , Filippo Brighina  3 , Vincenzo Raieli  4
Affiliations

Migraine and handedness

Giovanni Battista La Pegna et al. Neurol Sci. 2021 Jul.

Abstract

Migraine is a typically unilateral disorder in adulthood; however, the reasons for painful lateralization have been little investigated. The possible influence of manual dominance was suggested. We aimed to investigate the localization of pain in migraine attacks in right-handed and left-handed subjects. The retrospective study collected 546 patients with migraine aged between 16 and 65 years, reporting the manual dominance to the Edinburgh test. We included 466 right-handed and 80 left-handed subjects with migraine. We registered 4215 unilateral painful attacks. The right-handers had 3412 unilateral episodes; 62.8% of the attacks were characterized by pain on the right side and 37.2% by pain on the left. The left-handed subjects reported 803 unilateral pain with 63.5% of unilateral pain episodes on the left side and 36.5% of attacks with lateralized pain on the right (p < 0.001). Our data suggest that manual dominance may influence the side of pain lateralization in migraine.

Keywords: Handedness; Left-handers; Manual dominance; Migraine; Pain; Right-handers.

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