Background: Vestibular symptoms and balance changes are common in patients with migraine, especially in the ones with aura and chronic migraine. However, it is not known if the balance changes are determined by the presence of vestibular symptoms or migraine subdiagnosis. Therefore, the aim of this study was to verify if the migraine subdiagnosis and/or the presence of vestibular symptoms can predict balance dysfunction in migraineurs. Methods: The study included 49 women diagnosed with migraine with aura, 53 without aura, 51 with chronic migraine, and 54 headache-free women. All participants answered a structured questionnaire regarding migraine features and presence of vestibular symptoms, such as dizziness/vertigo. The participants performed the Modified Sensory Organization Test on an AMTI© force plate. The data were analysed using a linear mixed-effect regression model. Results: The presence of vestibular symptoms did not predict postural sway, but the subdiagnosis was a significant predictor of postural sway. Migraine with aura patients exhibited more sway than migraine patients without aura when the surface was unstable. Additionally, we found high effect sizes (ES > 0.79) for postural sway differences between patients with chronic migraine or with aura compared to controls or migraine without aura, suggesting that these results are clinically relevant. Conclusions: The subdiagnosis of migraine, instead of the presence of vestibular symptoms, can predict postural control impairments observed in migraineurs. This lends support to the notion that balance instability is related to the presence of aura and migraine chronicity, and that it should be considered even in patients without vestibular symptoms.

Background: Despite that photophobia and phonophobia are well-known symptoms related to migraine, it is unclear whether they affect daily life activities during the headache-free period. Objective: To evaluate the interictal photophobia/phonophobia intensity during daily activities in migraineurs and non-headache individuals. Methods: Women with migraine without aura (MoA, n = 30), migraine with aura (MA, n = 30), chronic migraine (CM, n = 30) and without headache (CG, n = 30) reported the photophobia and phonophobia intensity during daily activities using a Likert scale ranging from 0 (no discomfort) to 10 (maximum discomfort). Results: The migraine groups reported higher intensity of interictal photophobia and phonophobia than CG during “driving” and “social situations”, respectively (p < 0.05). MA and CM groups presented higher intensity of phonophobia than CG, hearing sounds in everyday situations and listening to conversations in noisy places (p < 0.05). Also, the MA group presented higher interictal phonophobia than the CG to keep concentration in noisy places (p < 0.05). Weak positive correlations were observed between the intensity of both photophobia and phonophobia with migraine intensity, frequency of migraine and frequency of aura (p < 0.05). Conclusion: Interictally, the intensity of photophobia and phonophobia reported during daily activities is higher in patients with migraine, especially those with aura and chronic migraine, than in non-headache subjects.