Migraines, Headaches and MS

Migraines are more common in women with multiple sclerosis (MS) than in those without the disease, new research shows.

The study looked at close to 117,000 U.S. women participating in the Nurses’ Health Study II, including 18,000 who had been diagnosed with migraine at the start of the study. The women were assessed every two years over a 16-year period. Of the 375 women who developed MS during the study, 82 had been diagnosed with migraine when the study began.

The researchers determined that women with a migraine diagnosis at the start of the study were 47 percent more likely to develop MS than other women. The risk was the same regardless of age, vitamin D levels, body mass index, smoking status or where the women lived.

This is the first large-scale study of its kind to examine the association between migraine and MS. The findings were released online Feb. 16 and are scheduled to be presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s annual meeting in Toronto in April.

“While having a history of migraine diagnosis was linked to MS, women with migraine need to know that over 99 percent of them will never develop MS, thus having migraine should definitely not be a reason to worry about getting MS,” study author Dr. Ilya Kister, of the New York University School of Medicine, said in a news release from the American Academy of Neurology.

“More research is needed since it’s still not known whether migraine is a risk factor for developing MS or if it is a condition that occurs at the same time as MS,” Kister added.

Source: Health.com © 2010 Health Media Ventures, Inc (17/02/10)

Patients with multiple sclerosis are more apt to suffer from headaches than the general population, results of a study hint.

Multiple sclerosis, or MS, is a disease in which the immune system mistakenly attacks and damages the myelin sheath that protects nerve cells. It can cause symptoms ranging from vague tingling to blindness and paralysis.

"Headache is not generally considered a symptom of MS, and studies investigating the relationship between the two conditions have produced conflicting results," Dr. Mario Zappia, of the University of Catania, and colleagues note in a report published this month.

In a "case-control" study, the researchers screened 101 MS patients and 101 controls for headaches. They found that the frequency of headache was higher in the MS patients than in the control patients.

Among the MS patients, 58 (about 57 percent) fulfilled the diagnostic criteria for headache. Most of these patients were affected by tension-type headache or migraine.

In contrast, 31 (roughly 38 percent) of the 101 controls fulfilled the diagnostic criteria for headache, mostly migraine and tension-type headache.

In an analysis adjusting for age and sex, the researchers observed a significant association between MS and headache. The likelihood of headache was more than twofold higher in the MS patients than in the control patients.

The increased risk of headache in MS patients "supports the hypothesis of a common pathway between these conditions; as suggested by other studies, the higher frequency of headache in MS subjects could be related to brainstem lesions," Zappia's team concludes.

"However, it should be noted that the role of brainstem in migraine pathogenesis is still controversial, and other types of study are needed to confirm this hypothesis."

Source: Cephalalgia, November 2008. (04/12/08)