How migraines protect against diabetes (Migraines can be good?)

Medical XPress / American Chemical Society / ^ | Aug. 26, 2021 | American Chemical Society Team

[ConservativeMind]

People who get migraines are less likely to develop type 2 diabetes, while some people who develop diabetes become less prone to migraines. Today, scientists studying the link between these conditions report how the peptides that cause migraine pain can influence production of insulin in mice, possibly by regulating the amount of secreted insulin or by increasing the number of pancreatic cells that produce it.

The link between the two diseases isn't obvious: "Migraines happen in the brain, while diabetes is associated with the pancreas, and these organs are far from each other," says Thanh Do, Ph.D., the project's principal investigator. His group became interested in the subject after a number of papers described an inverse relationship between the conditions.

Researchers already knew that two peptides in the nervous system—calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) and pituitary adenylate cyclase-activating polypeptide (PACAP)—play a major role in causing the pain of migraines. These same peptides, along with the related peptide amylin, are also found in the pancreas. There, they influence release of insulin from beta cells.

Because of their role in migraine and diabetes, CGRP and PACAP offer targets for therapies that could treat either of these conditions. Migraine drugs that interfere with CGRP and its cellular receptors recently went on the market, and other treatments are being studied.

"Despite these positive results, you can't inject CGRP and PACAP into the body as therapeutic strategies for diabetes because these peptides cause migraine pain," Do says.

Because CGRP and PACAP can seemingly protect against diabetes, Do and others worry that the anti-CGRP and anti-PACAP treatments under development or already on the market for migraine could have the unintended consequence of increasing the risk of diabetes. In addition, these peptides are involved in numerous other beneficial functions in the body, such as blood vessel dilation.

[Does so]

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