One simple question detects motion sickness susceptibility in migraine patients

Objective

To find out if motion sickness susceptibility (MSS) of vestibular migraine (VM) patients and migraine only (MO) patients can be reliably detected with a single simple question: “Can you read while travelling in a car without getting motion sick?”.

Method

Ninety-two definite VM and 58 MO patients and 74 healthy control (HC) subjects were asked about their MSS and about being able to read while riding in a car without becoming motion sick. A Motion Sickness Susceptibility Questionnaire (MSSQ-Short) including childhood (MSA), adulthood (MSB) and total (MST) parts was also administered to all participants. ROC curves of MSSQ-Short were prepared for “not being able to read in a car” as the gold standard.

Results

Mean MSA scores were significantly higher in both VM and MO patients than in HCs (p < 0.001), but their scores were not significantly different (p = 0.171). Mean MSB and MST scores were significantly higher in VM than in MO patients (p < 0.001) and both VM and MO patients had significantly higher scores than HCs (p < 0.001). MSA scores were significantly higher than MSB scores in MO patients (p < 0.001). All sections of the questionnaire were associated with high area-under-curve values for MSS detected by the question about being able to read in a car without becoming motion sick.

Conclusion

We propose that all migraine patients could have the same level of MSS in childhood but MO patients are able to compensate over years, but VM patients are not. A quick way to determine MSS is to ask about the ability to read without becoming motion sickness while riding a car.