The body quickly breaks down nitroglycerin to nitric oxide, which causes the smooth muscle in blood vessels to relax, allowing more blood to flow through arteries and veins. While inhibiting production of nitric oxide has been shown to help with migraine, it also raises blood pressure, which rules it out as a pharmaceutical solution. “We have to look at what happens after nitric oxide is produced,” Dussor said. “Can we safely inhibit a relevant pathway?”In the current study, UT Dallas researchers exposed mice to two common triggers of migraine in humans: repeated stress and a chemical that produces nitric oxide, also called a nitric oxide donor. “If female mitochondria are better at adapting to changes, it would make sense that the nitric oxide donor did not affect them as much,” Lackovic said.