Migraine Does Not Worsen CVD Outcomes in Older Women

PHILADELPHIA—Migraine is not associated with the risk for stroke, myocardial infarction (MI), or cardiovascular disease (CVD), according to research results presented at the American Headache Society’s 61st Annual Scientific Meeting.

The research was led and presented by Jelena Pavlovic, MD, PhD, who is an assistant professor of neurology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and a neurologist at the Montefiore Headache Center in the Bronx, New York.

The connection between migraine and CVD has been controversial. Studies about this connection have been conducted in cohorts of younger women, but research on how migraine affects older postmenopausal women, who tend to experience more CVD events than their younger counterparts, have been lacking.

Therefore, Dr Pavlovic and colleagues examined the connection between migraine and CVD events among older participants of the Women’s Health Initiative Study.

From 1993 to 1998, the researchers recruited postmenopausal women age 50 to 79 years from 40 US-based clinical centers. Participants were followed for 22 years, and CVD events were recorded.

CVD events were defined as MI, stroke, angioplasty of coronary arteries, coronary bypass surgery, coronary heart disease, deep vein thrombosis, or pulmonary embolism.

Of the 71,441 participants included in the analysis, 7616 (10.7%) had a history of migraine—this group tended to drink less alcohol, exercise less, and have higher intake of vitamin D and calcium than women without migraine.

Over 22 years, women with migraine experienced fewer strokes (211 vs 1943) and MI events (187 vs 1723) than women without migraine. There was also less CVD reported among women with migraine vs those without migraine (617 vs 5672).

Moreover, age did not play a role in the association between migraine history and CVD outcomes.

“History of migraine does not appear to be correlated with the risk of stroke, MI, and composite CVD events over the 22 years of follow up in this large longitudinal cohort of older postmenopausal women,” the researchers concluded. “As migraine is highly prevalent in the population, these findings have significant public health implications.”

—Amanda Balbi

Reference:

Pavlovic J, Yang J, Hedlin H, Xuezhi J, Robbins J, Schantz P. The relationship between migraine and risk of cardiovascular disease in postmenopausal women in the observational longitudinal cohort of the Women’s Health Initiative Study (WHI). Paper presented at: American Headache Society’s 61st Annual Scientific Meeting; July 11-14, 2019; Philadelphia, PA.