Migraines Up Women's Stroke, Heart Risks

(WebMD)  How often a woman has a migraine may play a role in determining her risk for strokes and heart attacks.

Medical evidence has long supported a link between migraines and vascular problems, including strokes, but information regarding migraine frequency and such events has been lacking. 

New research presented this week at the American Academy of Neurology's 60th Anniversary Annual Meeting in Chicago suggests that women who have weekly migraines have a significantly higher risk for stroke than those who get the headaches less frequently. Those who have infrequent migraines may be more likely to have a heart attack.

The findings are based on the Women's Health Study, which involved 27,798 women health professionals 45 years and older who did not have cardiovascular disease at the beginning of the study. Cholesterol levels and details about migraine frequency were obtained when the study began.

Researchers grouped migraine frequency into three categories: less than monthly, monthly, or one or more a week. Sixty-five percent said they had a migraine less than once a month, 30 percent had a monthly migraine, and 5 percent had migraines at least once a week.

The researchers included Tobias Kurth, M.D., ScD, of Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston.

Kurth's team followed the women for 12 years, documenting the number of cardiovascular events. The following occurred during the study period: 

• 305 heart attacks


• 310 ischemic strokes


• 706 cardiovascular events

Women experiencing frequent migraines were at highest risk:

• Women who had migraines once per week or more were nearly three times more likely to have an ischemic stroke and one and a half times more likely to experience a heart attack as women without migraines.


• Women who had infrequent migraines (less than one a month) were one and a half times more likely to have a heart attack or stroke. 


• Women with monthly migraines were not at increased risk.

"Our results may indicate that the mechanisms by which migraine associates with specific cardiovascular events may differ," Kurth says in a news release. "Future studies are needed to address whether migraine prevention reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease."

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, about three out of four people who get migraines are women.
By Kelli Stacy
Reviewed by Elizabeth Klodas
©2005-2008 WebMD, LLC. All rights reserved

[victimofpain]

I read the CBS story on chronic pain patients being nothing more than addicts and I can see that reporting on FACT has gone way down-hill!
Calling chronic pain sufferers like those who suffer chronic migraines and back pain addicts is like saying all diabetics abuse their insulin! Same thing! They only take the drugs cause they want to live, whaaa!
I can not believe the ignorance of our society. Migraines are not fun and chronic pain is not a day at the amusement park either! Pain can kill folks...this isn''t something new! Un-relieved pain reates all manner of problems for your body. High blood pressure, diabetis, high cholesterol...ect.
If pain was treated adequately in the first place then so many people wouldn''t die, but in America it is more immportant to waste billions of dollars to fight illegal drugs then to change policy, legalize the drugs, regulate, tax and make the black market demand go away! But if you like the idea of you
r children being subjected to drugs in elementary school and the drugwar jailing innocent doctors and disabled pain patients instead of making any progress on fighting drugs then keep that money burning war on drugs rollin America!