Patients and samples

The study was approved by the ethics committee of the First Affiliated Hospital of Xiamen University, and it was conducted using clinical samples from patients with migraine who were treated from February 2013 to February 2016. The control group comprised of 425 non-headache, age and gender-matched healthy volunteers who were recruited from the same regional background (southern Fujian province). All of the patients with migraine were diagnosed as suffering either from MA or MO by two headache specialists after neurological examination, direct interview, computed tomography (CT), or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), according to the diagnostic criteria set by the ICHD-III (4). In addition, the healthy controls had no personal or family history of chronic headache. This study was carried out in accordance with the code of ethics of the World Medical Association (Declaration of Helsinki) for experiments in humans.