Women, Migraine, and Serious Disease

A study published this year in the Journal of Headache and Pain confirms our previous concerns about migraine and heart disease – but also gives us surprising clues about cancer risk.

It was hard to come up with a title for this post, and in fact this is a complex study with no easy answers. But let’s start with an overview.

This research comes from the Women’s Health Study, a study of 27,844 women. They were 45 and older at the start of the study, which followed the women over the next two decades or so.

The study was looking for some big clues or general trends when it comes to headache and migraine and death rates. Simply put, do we see women with migraine dying at a higher rate than the general population? If so, what are they more likely to die of?

The perhaps comforting short answer is – no, women with migraine are not more likely to die sooner than women in general. But there’s more to it than that. (And in some ways, we would like to start seeing women with migraine dying later than the general population – because often times they are more aware of their health and may start taking better care of themselves!)

But there was one cause of death that was higher among women with migraine with aura specifically – that was cardiovascular disease. As we’ve noticed in other studies, migraine, and especially migraine with aura (as in this case) does seem to increase risk of cardiovascular disease.

Although some have questioned the role of migraine medication in this link, it’s interesting that, in this study, it was only migraine with aura that increased risk.

The moral of the story is the same as what we’ve been saying for years – if you have migraine, treat it. And be aware of other risk factors you may have for stroke and heart attack et cetera.

Now, for those of you who are mathematically minded, you may be asking – if there is an increased risk for cardiovascular disease, why weren’t women with migraine in general more likely to die earlier? The surprising answer – those with migraine with aura were also at a slightly decreased risk for cancer – especially female-specific cancers. So that balanced out the numbers.

Why would this be? Remember, this study was just looking for some overall clues, it doesn’t give us a lot of specific information. But researchers believe the answer could be related to hormones, which do affect both migraine and cancers.

For more on this study, see Women With Migraine, Aura Have Increased Risk of Cardiovascular Death. For all the details of the study, go to Migraine, headache, and mortality in women: a cohort study.