Migraine ranks third as the world's commonest disorder. In more than 300 diseases, it ranks sixth when it comes to the burden it represents. Christian Wöber, head of the section specializing in headaches at MedUni Vienna's Department of Neurology stated "Determining the factors that trigger migraine attacks is an important, albeit difficult, step in managing migraine." Authentic  indications cannot be obtained merely by asking sufferers but rather a diary needs to be maintained to keep the detailed records. In order to implement migraine treatment on an individual basis, these records must then undergo complex statistical analysis.

One of the world leaders in researching migraine trigger factors is the Headache Working Group at MedUni Vienna. It has evoked the interest of the US start-up "Curelator," which is helping to develop an app for revealing migraine triggers. The alliance between MedUni Vienna and this company gave way to a study recently published in the leading journal Cephalalgia.

The data from MedUni Vienna was used to explore a completely novel approach for estimating migraine trigger factors. The trigger factors required for a migraine attack was determined separately for each individual patient for the first time ever as earlier this was done collectively. "By analyzing cases on an individual basis, we are able to provide medicine that is tailored to the individual circumstances of each patient. The need for this approach, hitherto uncommon in medical studies, was recently emphasized in the leading journal Nature," said Wöber.

According to a current study published in Cephalalgia-the comparison of the individual case analyses with the overall analysis for the entire study population was done. One surprising yet practical fact was drawn from the study that out of a population of 326 patients who kept a detailed diary for 90 days, it was possible to recognise possible migraine triggers in 87% of sufferers by conducting personalized analyses. Four possible trigger factors for each participant was found on an average. The MedUni Vienna experts said, "What was unexpected was that the individual profile of possible trigger factors was extremely variable and was unique in 85% of patients. Each of the 33 migraine trigger factors investigated correlated with migraine attacks, in at least some of the patients." Although, in the overall investigation of all 326 volunteers, this was only the case for eight of the factors.

Hence, by far a substantial proportion of patients were found to have individual triggers, which could not be recognised in the overall analysis of all patients. As per Wöber: "For the very first time, this new analysis therefore provides information about the correlation between migraine attacks and a broad spectrum of possible trigger factors for each individual patient and is therefore a step towards personalized migraine management."