Men with migraine headaches may be at an increased risk for major cardiovascular disease and especially heart attacks, according to a report in the April 23 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Migraines are recurring moderate to severe headaches that may be accompanied by visual disturbances, dizziness, nausea, vomiting or sensitivity to light and sound. More than 28 million people in the United States have this condition, which peaks in midlife, according to background information in the article. Approximately 18 percent of women and 6 percent of men have migraines.
Tobias Kurth, M.D., Sc.D., Harvard Medical School, Harvard School of Public Health and Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, and colleagues studied 20,084 men age 40 to 84 without a previous history of heart disease. From the time they enrolled in the study (between 1981 and 1984) through 2005, the men were sent yearly questionnaires asking about cardiovascular disease events. These included non-fatal ischemic stroke (stroke caused by reduced blood flow to the brain), non-fatal myocardial infarction (heart attack) or death from ischemic cardiovascular disease (an insufficient supply of blood to the heart). Coronary revascularization (coronary artery angioplasty or bypass surgery) and angina (chest pain) were also evaluated.
Participants were classified as having migraine if they indicated experiencing migraine during the first five years. A total of 1,449 (7.2 percent) of the men reported migraines, including 434 with frequent migraines (four or more times during the five-year period). During an average of 15.7 years of follow-up, 2,236 major ischemic cardiovascular disease events occurred, including 750 ischemic strokes, 1,046 myocardial infarctions and 866 ischemic cardiovascular disease deaths, plus 2,257 coronary revascularizations and 2,625 cases of angina.