Paris, January 11: A discovery among blind people has helped scientists resolve a mystery why light can make a migraine go from headache to head-splitter, according to a study published on Sunday.
The problem appears to lie with a newly-discovered bunch of cells in the retina, its authors say.
Researchers from Beth Israel Deaconess Centre, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School, made the find after pondering why some blind people who suffer from migraines also experience photophobia – an extreme sensitivity to light that horribly worsens these headaches.
In a paper published online in the journal Nature Neuroscience, the team reported how they probed two groups of migraine-suffering blind individuals.
One group, of six people, was totally blind and immune to the normal sleep-wakefulness cycle caused by daylight and night.
—Agencies