{"id":2968,"date":"2026-04-04T15:29:18","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T15:29:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/americanvoiceofhealth.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/04\/demystifying-migraine\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T15:29:18","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T15:29:18","slug":"demystifying-migraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/americanvoiceofhealth.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/04\/demystifying-migraine\/","title":{"rendered":"Demystifying migraine"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Veasey Conway\/Harvard Staff Photographer<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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\n\t\t\tHealth\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\t\tDemystifying migraine\t<\/h1>\n

\n\t\t\t\u2018It\u2019s not an imagined headache, and it\u2019s not a mild condition,\u2019 says Michael Moskowitz, Brain Prize recipient for his dogma-defying research\t\t<\/p>\n

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\n\t\tSy Boles\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHarvard Staff Writer\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/address>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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\n\t\t\t5 min read\t\t<\/span>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/header>\n

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\n\t\t\tPart of the<\/span>
\n\t\t\tProfiles of Progress<\/span>
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About 15 percent of people worldwide suffer from migraine, a neurological condition that can cause headache, nausea, visual disturbances, and sensitivity to light and sound. <\/p>\n

After stroke and neonatal brain injuries, migraine is the third-highest nerve-related cause<\/a> of years lost to disability worldwide. <\/p>\n

The condition is also undertreated and poorly understood, says Michael A. Moskowitz<\/a>, Harvard Medical School professor of neurology at Mass General. Moskowitz has made multiple discoveries that have revolutionized thinking about the condition, deepened knowledge about why some treatments work, and led to new treatments that are available and prescribed now. <\/p>\n

Moskowitz\u2019s interest in neurology began early. At 14, he worked as a messenger in a hospital for patients with chronic neurological diseases near his family\u2019s home in New York City, and was shocked by what he saw. \u201cI could not comprehend how the brain could so easily betray the body,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

When he began his career in the early 1970s, migraine was still poorly understood. Images of the brains of patients came back totally normal: On paper, there was nothing wrong. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I first started in the field, many people believed that migraine was a psychological problem,\u201d said Moskowitz. \u201cBut it\u2019s not an imagined headache, and it\u2019s not a mild condition.\u201d <\/p>\n

His first step, when he was a postdoctoral fellow and junior faculty in the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology, an inter-institutional collaboration between Harvard University, Harvard Medical School, and MIT, was to dive into the literature.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know how many nickels I dropped in the Xerox machine at the Countway Library, but quite a few,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWhen I first started in the field, many people believed that migraine was a psychological problem.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

He found that no scientist had yet mapped the nerves carrying sensation from the circle of Willis<\/a>, a network of arteries in the innermost layer of the meninges that supply blood to the brain. The brain itself doesn\u2019t register pain, but the meninges, the brain\u2019s three-layered covering, do. It seemed a promising place to start. <\/p>\n

So using a novel polymer-based technology developed in partnership with MIT chemical engineer Robert Langer<\/a>, Moskowitz showed that nerve fibers that wrap around the circle of Willis travel back to the brain via the trigeminal nerve, which also carries sensation from the forehead, where headaches are often felt. His lab then found that these nerves contain and release neuropeptides, setting up a cascade that causes meningeal inflammation and other harmful effects. <\/p>\n

It was a stark departure from the previous belief about migraine, which was that the condition was purely caused by the dilation of blood vessels. <\/p>\n

In later research, Moskowitz demonstrated that classical migraine drugs called ergots and triptans acted in a completely different and unexpected way than had been assumed: Rather than constricting blood vessels, the drugs blocked those harmful neuropeptides from being released from nerve fibers in the first place. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat changed 100 years of dogma about how the ergots worked,\u201d Moskowitz said. It also led to a new class of drugs that blocked neuropeptide release without vessel constriction In addition, it led to the development of drugs and antibodies that block the action of CGRP, a major neuropeptide in this pathway; those drugs are still in use today. Other neuropeptides discovered through his research are providing promising leads for future migraine therapies, said Moskowitz, who in 2021 received the Brain Prize<\/a> for his contributions to migraine research. <\/p>\n

Building on the breakthrough, his lab began to look for the trigger that caused the release of peptides in the first place. They identified cortical spreading depression, a slow-moving tsunami of electrical and chemical changes in the brain. As the wave progresses, it can trigger migraine\u2019s varied symptoms. For example, the migraine\u2019s classic visual aura occurs as the chemical and electrical changes move through the brain\u2019s visual cortex. <\/p>\n

Moskowitz\u2019s research is also focused on the study of stroke and its potential neurovascular targets. In 2024, he and his chief collaborator, Matthias Nahrendorf<\/a>, an HMS professor of radiology at Mass General, were awarded a Javits Award, a prestigious seven-year research grant, from the National Institutes of Health. Along with another collaborator, Charles Lin, an HMS professor of dermatology at Mass General, they are following up on new discoveries showing that the skull bone marrow and its blood-forming inflammatory cells contribute to the health of the meninges. The findings could impact a variety of neurological diseases, including stroke, Alzheimer\u2019s disease, and multiple sclerosis. <\/p>\n

\u201cMy research has been 98 percent funded by the NIH over the course of my career,\u201d Moskowitz said, expressing gratitude for the federal partnership that allowed bench-to-bedside medicine to flourish. \u201cI can say with great confidence that if it weren\u2019t for the NIH, we definitely wouldn\u2019t have these new migraine drugs that block headaches.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Veasey Conway\/Harvard Staff Photographer Health Demystifying migraine \u2018It\u2019s not an imagined headache, and it\u2019s not a mild condition,\u2019 says Michael Moskowitz, Brain Prize recipient for his dogma-defying research Sy Boles Harvard Staff Writer April 3, 2026 5 min read Part of the Profiles of Progress series About 15 percent of people worldwide suffer from migraine, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2969,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"loftocean_post_primary_category":0,"loftocean_post_format_gallery":"","loftocean_post_format_gallery_ids":"","loftocean_post_format_gallery_urls":"","loftocean_post_format_video_id":0,"loftocean_post_format_video_url":"","loftocean_post_format_video_type":"","loftocean_post_format_video":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_type":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_url":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_id":0,"loftocean_post_format_audio":"","loftocean-featured-post":"","loftocean-like-count":0,"loftocean-view-count":9,"tinysalt_single_post_intro_label":"","tinysalt_single_post_intro_description":"","tinysalt_hide_post_featured_image":"","tinysalt_post_featured_media_position":"","tinysalt_single_site_header_source":"","tinysalt_single_custom_site_header":"0","tinysalt_single_custom_sticky_site_header":"0","tinysalt_single_custom_sticky_site_header_style":"sticky-scroll-up","tinysalt_single_site_footer_source":"","tinysalt_single_custom_site_footer":"0","footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-staying-healthy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/americanvoiceofhealth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/americanvoiceofhealth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/americanvoiceofhealth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/americanvoiceofhealth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/americanvoiceofhealth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/americanvoiceofhealth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2968\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/americanvoiceofhealth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/americanvoiceofhealth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/americanvoiceofhealth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/americanvoiceofhealth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}