2023-06-23 12:45:57
Research has examined to what extent there is a relationship between the tendency to have headaches and the level of risk of suffering a stroke or heart attack.
It has long been suspected that people diagnosed with migraine are at increased risk of having a stroke or heart attack before the age of 60. Previous studies have suggested that the risk of ischemic stroke (when a blood clot blocks a blood vessel to the brain) is higher especially in young women. It was not clear whether women with migraine also have a higher risk of heart attack and hemorrhagic stroke (when an artery in the brain ruptures) compared to men. The new research has aimed to clarify the latter.
The team led by Cecilia Hvitfeldt Fuglsang, from Aarhus University and Aarhus University Hospital, in Denmark, carried out a nationwide study by reviewing Danish medical records from the period between 1996 and 2018, of people aged between 18 and 60 years. The team identified men and women with migraine based on their medication prescription records and compared their risk levels for heart attack, ischemic stroke, and hemorrhagic stroke before age 60, with risk levels faced by people in the general population without migraine.
Analysis has shown that both men and women with migraine have a similarly increased risk of ischemic stroke. However, women with migraine may also have a slightly increased risk of heart attack and hemorrhagic stroke, compared with men with migraine and the general population.
Headache affects quite a few people. (Illustration: Amazings/NCYT)
Taken together, the results suggest that migraine is more problematic in women. In addition, it must be taken into account that the disease is predominantly diagnosed in them.
The study authors caution that because they used drug prescription records to identify migraine sufferers, they may have missed untreated individuals, which may have led to an underestimation of migraine’s contribution. to these health problems.
Because heart attack and stroke can cause lifelong disability or even death, the authors of the new study say it’s vital to identify people most at risk to make it easier to target them with targeted preventive therapies.
The study has been published publicly in the academic journal PloS Medicine. The reference of the work is the following: Hvitfeldt Fuglsang C, Pedersen L, Schmidt M, Vandenbroucke JP, Bøtker HE, Sørensen HT (2023) Migraine and risk of premature myocardial infarction and stroke among men and women: A Danish population-based cohort study . PLoS Med 20(6): e1004238. (Source: NCYT from Amazings)
#Migraines #risk #suffering #stroke