migraine statistics

27 April 2022

Massive Study on Headache Statistics

Just how common are headache disorders? This is an extremely difficult question, in spite of the statistics that are thrown around as if they’re certain.

A new study out of Norway, published in The Journal of Headache and Pain, is giving us a new way to look at headaches and migraine from a global perspective.

Researchers took 357 publications, not just adding up the numbers, but looking carefully at how the study was done, to come up with some new estimates for 1961-2020.

Age & Gender

Here is just a sample of the findings of the study. First, 52% of the global population has suffered from a headache disorder of some kind this past year. Here’s what that looks like:

Global headache statistics — Global Headache Statistics

What I call “chronic headache” here is defined as a headache more than 15 days a month (H15+ in the study).

In agreement with many other studies, headaches are more common in women than in men. The difference is significant, if not huge, until you get to migraine. In migraine, about twice as many women had migraine than men (~~which means of course that we should ignore men’s migraine~~). Another interesting migraine fact was that, unlike many other headache disorders, it does tend to be lower if you’re under the age of 10 or over 65.

Geography

The study also looked at geographical location. A possible limitation of the study was that most of the research has been done in wealthier countries. However, from what this study could tell, Southeast Asia, East Asia and Oceania was the best place to be, with lowest headache prevalence.

Headache is generally more common in the North Africa/Middle East region. Migraine, however, was most common in South Asia, as was chronic headache. Tension-type headache peaked in high income countries.

Headache today?

Do you have a headache today? On any given day, about 15.8% of the world population have a headache of some kind. Almost half of these – 7%, are migraine.

Progress through the years?

There hasn’t been a huge change overall in the prevalence of headache over the past few decades, which is not particularly encouraging. But there’s worse news. Migraine actually seems to be increasing.

Why would that be? Is it just that we are more aware of migraine, and so are diagnosing it more often? Or are there environmental factors (technology, pollution, change of diet, et cetera) that are making a difference?

The researchers did discuss this question, extensively. As with all of these statistics, in spite of careful research, it is very difficult to say with certainty exactly what the numbers are. But thanks to a lot of hard work, we do have some clues to help us more forward, and keep fighting back against headache. We still have a long way to go.

For more, you can read the abstract and the complete study here: The global prevalence of headache: an update, with analysis of the influences of methodological factors on prevalence estimates

A quicker summary can be found in ScienceDaily: Global estimates of headaches suggest disorder impacts over 50 percent of the population

21 October 2019

Are We “Counting” Migraine Attacks Wrong? (podcast)

James Discoveries & Stats, Information, Podcast 1

A podcast about an interesting new study that may begin to change the way we calculate the number of “migraine attacks” we get in a given period. Find out why this is important to future research, and to your current understanding of your personal migraine attacks.

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You can read the full study here: What constitutes a migraine attack? -A counting clinician’s perspective.

14 December 2018

Fascinating (and disturbing) New Migraine and Headache Statistics

James Information, News 0

Last month, The Lancet (a world-renown medical journal) published an article with some new statistics about migraine and headache, from 1990 to 2016. The statistics are troubling as the fight to stop migraine and headache disorders continues around the world.

Researchers used the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016 (GBD 2016) to gain new insights into migraine and tension-type headache in particular. The advantage of using this study is that it has a global focus. It’s true that not every country has equally useful information, but it’s the best estimate we have today.

According to the new study, almost 3 billion people suffered from migraine or tension headache in 2016 (2.93 billion, to be more exact). That’s almost 40% of the world.

Of those, 1.89 had tension-type headache (over 25% of the world’s population) and 1.04 billion had migraine (about 14% of the world’s population).

Statistically, women are more likely to have headaches than men, but they’re a serious problem for everyone. People 15-49 are also at highest risk.

Now, here’s where things get interesting. Researchers had to calculate just how disabling these headaches were, on average. We’ve talked about this before – how both tension-type headaches and migraine are on a scale (it is possible to have a “mild” migraine attack, and a fairly “disabling” tension-type headache. And the two types may have a lot more in common than we once believed.).

But here’s a chart showing the difference.

Headache disability As you can see, migraine is generally significantly more disabling than tension-type headache (no surprise there). Here’s what the numbers mean – during an attack, someone with migraine loses 43.4% of their health on average (I know, at times during many attacks it’s much higher – remember, this is an average). For tension-type headache, patients lose 3.7% of their health.

But look at it this way – what if you lost that much productivity every day? What if you lose that % of your pay each month, or missed that % of your major family events? Even tension-type headache can be quite serious.

Researchers stretched this into YLDs, or years lived with disability (it’s a technical calculation used to estimate the affects of disability – don’t get caught up in the details right now). But first, how much time are people living with these attacks?

Patients who experience tension-type headaches tend to spend 4.7% of an average year with a headache, migraine patients 8.5% of a year.

So, worldwide, migraine caused 45.1 million YLDs in 2016, and tension-type headaches 7.2 million YLDs. That’s a total of 52.3 million YLDs worldwide – accounting for 6.5% of all YLDs from any cause!

If you’re head is spinning from all this, here’s the bottom line. These two issues alone – not even taking into consideration headaches of other types – leads to 6.5% of the world’s disability. That is a huge number, when you think about all the other causes.

Out of the full list, tension-type headache and migraine were both in the top 10 most prevalent concerns (tension-type headache third after after cavities and latent tuberculosis infection). Migraine especially is one of the main causes of disability worldwide. Migraine is among the top causes of YLDs.

The researchers said “any improvements in the efficacy of headache treatments during this period (which saw the introduction of triptans for migraine) have had no detectable effect”. That’s right – no change. (They suggest that one reason is because of lack of worldwide availability of treatments, and the inability to measure lengths of attacks in this study. Fair enough to some extent, especially the second point. If stopping a migraine after 10 minutes is measured the same as 3 hours of agony, we can see how it would be hard to measure the benefits of triptans in this study. Still – no improvement??)

The researchers suggest that treatment of such a huge population will be a massive job – and that perhaps our focus should be on reducing risk.

Researchers also recommend an increased focus on headache care in health care systems, a focus on simple remedies, more resources given to research, and the development of better cost-effective treatments.

There’s a lot to discuss here, and you can read more for yourself in the links below.

I have seen many people helped by quality information, which is why this blog is here. So I know that change and improvement is possible. But there are many, many, who are still not being helped. As the authors of this study put it: Headache is not limited to the high-income part of the world and, unless action is taken, it is here to stay…

News summary: Migraines and tension headaches are more prevalent and debilitating than we thought
Full study: Global, regional, and national burden of migraine and tension-type headache, 1990–2016

19 August 2013

Migraine During and After Pregnancy

James Discoveries & Stats 2

First trimester

Over 1/2 have fewer attacks.
A significant number experience no change.
Occasionally, migraine attacks get worse.

Second trimester

About 3/4 have fewer attacks.
A significant number experience no change.
About 1 in 10 may get worse.

Third trimester

About 3/4 have fewer attacks.
About 20% experience no change.
Fewer than 10% may get worse.

Women with migraine without aura are much more likely to improve.

3 Months after birth

About 25% are still better than before pregnancy.

1 Year after birth

About 10% are better than they were before pregnancy.

Women who breastfeed are much more likely to have fewer attacks after pregnancy.
(Specifically, it takes longer for their migraine attacks to return)

The above statistics are estimates based on a number of studies (which is why numbers don’t always perfectly line up). For more information, check The Woman’s Migraine Toolkit (in the UK) (by Dr. Dawn A. Marcus and Dr. Philip A. Bain) (2011), and the following studies.