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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Neurol.
Sec. Neurocritical and Neurohospitalist Care
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fneur.2025.1569333
This article is part of the Research Topic Precision Medicine in Neurocritical Care View all 3 articles
Profiling chronic migraine patients according to clinical characteristics: a cluster analysis approach
Provisionally accepted
Masahito Katsuki 1,2*
Yasuhiko Matsumori 3
Shin Kawamura 4 Kenta Kashiwagi 4 Akihito Koh 4 Tetsuya Goto 1 Kazuma Kaneko 1 Naomichi Wada 1 Fuminori Yamagishi 4- 1 Suwa Red Cross Hospital, Suwa, Japan
- 2 Nagaoka University of Technology, Nagaoka, Niigata, Japan
- 3 Sendai Headache and Neurology Clinic, Sendai, Japan
- 4 Itoigawa Sogo Hospital, Itoigawa, Japan
To group the characteristics of chronic migraine (CM) by headache characteristics.We performed a retrospective analysis of the medical records of 821 adult CM patients who visited a specialized outpatient clinic for headaches. Using the headache characteristics, we performed Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise (DBSCAN) clustering to group CM patients. The burdens to their lives, monthly headache days (MHD), monthly acute medication intake days (AMD), and treatment outcomes were evaluated among the clusters.Through a cluster analysis based on headache characteristics, our findings indicated the potential existence of three distinct types of CM: cluster 1 (predominantly female with CM resembling migraine), cluster 2 (higher age, higher BMI, smoker), and cluster 3 (mostly female with CM that have fewer migraine characteristics). The impact on quality of life was significant in cluster 1 compared to cluster 3. However, there were no differences in treatment outcomes, initial MHD, AMD, the years of migraine, or treatment sensitivity among these three clusters.Cluster analysis mathematically divided CM patients into three groups, with predominant differences in the degree of disruption to their lives and their characteristics; further research is needed on the diagnostic criteria for CM and its characteristics.
Keywords: chronic migraine, cluster analysis (clustering analysis), data-driven medicine, Medication-overuse headache, Tension-Type Headache
Received: 31 Jan 2025; Accepted: 25 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Katsuki, Matsumori, Kawamura, Kashiwagi, Koh, Goto, Kaneko, Wada and Yamagishi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Masahito Katsuki, Suwa Red Cross Hospital, Suwa, Japan
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