A preliminary study on the relationship between central auditory processing and childhood primary headaches in the intercritical phase

The Journal of Headache and Pain

Research Article

Daniele Monzani¹  Elisabetta Genovese¹  Ernesto Caffo²  Angelo Russo²  Luigi Alberto Pini³  Antonella Ciriaco³  Paola Benincasa⁴ 

[1] Audiology Unit, Department of Diagnostic Medicine, Clinical and Public Health, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, via del Pozzo 71, Modena, Italy;Child Neurology and Psychiatry Unit, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, via del Pozzo 71, 41124, Modena, Italy;Headache and Drug Abuse Inter-Dep Research Centre, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, via del Pozzo 71, Modena, Italy;Otolaryngology Department, Hospital of Carpi, Via Guido Molinari 2, Carpi, Italy;

关键词: Childhood;    Primary headache;    Speech perception;    Audiometry;    Auditory processing;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1129-2377-14-69

 received in 2013-04-21, accepted in 2013-06-20,  发布年份 2013

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundRecently, an increasing number of articles have appeared on central auditory processing disorders, but in the literature there is only one study that evaluated the possible correlation between migraine in the critical phase and central auditory processing. The aim of our study was to assess the correlation between auditory processing information and childhood primary headaches in the intercritical phase.MethodsThis is an observational study. We enrolled 54 patients, 30 with primary headache (migraine and tension headache) and 24 normal controls, matched for sex and age. The mean age at first observation was 9 years 10 months; the duration of observational follow-up was 2 years. Both groups had normal audiological and neurological profiles, normal peripheral hearing acuity and normal cognitive and behavioral skills. We excluded patients who had undergone pharmacological prophylactic treatment for headaches in the 6 months preceding the study and subjects with a frequency of headache lower than one every two months. After enrolment, both groups were analyzed with a computerized test battery for Speech Perception Tests in silence and in noise background to assess speech perception disabilities. In addition, with a test battery of Speech Perception Tests, we compared patients with migraines and tension-type headaches. The non-parametric χ2 test, the Mann–Whitney U-test and the Wilcoxon signed ranks test were used for statistical analysis. P-values <0.05 were considered significant and STATA 10 software was used for statistical analyses.ResultsOur results showed that patients with primary headache (migraine and tension-type headache), had a deficit of auditory processing in noisy background compared to control cases, but we found no significant differences when we compared patients with migraine and tension-type headache.ConclusionsThis is a work in progress and further studies are needed to assess the relationship between the impairment of auditory processing and primary headache, not only to improve the diagnostic approach to primary headache, but also to improve therapeutic intervention.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Ciriaco et al.; licensee Springer. 2013. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.