The effect of selenium supplementation on oxidative stress, clinical and physiological symptoms in patients with migraine: a double-blinded randomized clinical trial

Arghavan Balali; Omid Sadeghi; Fariborz Khorvash; Mohammad Hossein Rouhani; Gholamreza Askari

doi:10.3389/fnut.2024.1369373

The effect of selenium supplementation on oxidative stress, clinical and physiological symptoms in patients with migraine: a double-blinded randomized clinical trial

Front Nutr. 2024 May 2:11:1369373. doi: 10.3389/fnut.2024.1369373. eCollection 2024.

Authors

Arghavan Balali^{1

2}, Omid Sadeghi², Fariborz Khorvash³, Mohammad Hossein Rouhani², Gholamreza Askari²

Affiliations

¹ Student Research Committee, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran.
² Department of Community Nutrition, School of Nutrition and Food Science, Nutrition and Food Security Research Center, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran.
³ Neurology Research Center, School of Medicine, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran.

Abstract

Background and aim: The present double-blinded randomized clinical trial aimed to investigate the effect of selenium supplementation on oxidative stress, clinical, and physiological symptoms in patients with migraine.

Methods: In total, 72 patients with migraine were randomly assigned to receive either 200 μg/day selenium (n = 36) or placebo (n = 36) for 12 weeks. Clinical traits of migraine (e.g., severity, frequency, and duration of headaches), mental health indices (e.g., depression, anxiety, and distress), quality of life, biomarkers of oxidative stress (e.g., nitric oxide [NO], malondialdehyde [MDA], total antioxidant capacity [TAC], total oxidant status [TOS]), and anthropometric indices were assessed at baseline and at the end of the study.

Results: Selenium supplementation resulted in a significant reduction in NO (-1.24 ± 0.43 vs. 0.16 ± 0.43; p = 0.03) levels and a significant increase in TAC (9.89 ± 2.50 vs. -0.18 ± 2.50; p = 0.01) compared to the placebo group. Moreover, selenium supplementation had a significant protective effect against MDA levels compared to placebo (0.33 ± 0.57 vs. 1.83 ± 0.57; p = 0.03). In addition, selenium intake was associated with a lower headache frequency (-8.15 ± 0.77 vs. -4.12 ± 0.77; p < 0.001) and severity (-2.89 ± 0.42 vs. -1.16 ± 0.42; p = 0.01) as well as a lower Headache Impact Test-6 (HIT-6) score (-9.22 ± 2.00 vs. -2.08 ± 2.00; p = 0.02) compared to the controls. For other outcome variables, we found no significant effect.

Conclusion: Selenium supplement may be considered a complementary therapy in patients with migraine due to its beneficial effects on oxidative stress and migraine symptoms. Further studies are needed to affirm our findings.Clinical Trial Registration: This study was registered in the Iranian Registry of Clinical Trials (https://www.irct.ir) on 27 May 2023 with code number of IRCT20121216011763N60.

Keywords: antioxidant; clinical trial; migraine; mood; oxidative stress; selenium.

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare that financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This study was financially supported by a grant from Isfahan University of Medical Sciences (MUI), Isfahan, Iran (code number: 3401612). The author (s) declare that financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.