Reassuring findings for migraine patients

Aug 15 2012

By Piriya Mahendra, MedWire Reporter

Women who experience migraine do not have a faster rate of cognitive decline than those without migraine, contradicting speculation that the condition may be a progressive brain disorder, say researchers.

"Based on these results, patients with migraine and their treating doctors should be reassured that migraine may not have long term consequences on cognitive function," they write in the British Medical Journal.

Pamela Rist (Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA) and team found that of the 6349 women included in their study, 853 (13.4%) reported any migraine. Of these, 195 (22.9%) reported migraine with aura, 248 (29.1%) had migraine without aura, and 410 (48.1%) had a past history of migraine.

Compared with women who had no history of migraine, those who experienced migraine with or without aura or who had a past history of migraine did not have a significantly different rate of cognitive decline from those without any history of migraine, over a mean follow-up period of 3.4 years.

Furthermore, women who experienced migraine were not at a significantly increased risk for substantial cognitive decline, defined as the worst 10% of the distribution of decline, compared with women who had no history of migraine.

Secondary analysis revealed that there was no evidence of significant effect modification by history of hypertension, baseline cognitive score, perceived change in memory, or educational attainment.

However, significant effect modification by age (older or younger than 75 years) was observed for cognitive status, driven by a greater rate of decline among those with a history of migraine who were older than 75 years compared with those who were younger.

Additionally, among women who had migraine with aura, those who experienced a cardiovascular event had faster rates of decline on the category fluency test than those who did not experience a cardiovascular event.

"However, because of the multiple subgroup analysis, this result should be interpreted with caution and further research is warranted to determine whether the interplay of migraine and cardiovascular disease leads to faster cognitive decline, and whether preventive strategies, can be applied," conclude the authors.

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