Women who experience migraine headaches are more liable to suffer a heart attack in comparison with men, a recent study shows.

Roughly 14 to fifteen% of the world’s population suffer from migraine, a condition that causes chronic headaches with severe symptoms. In keeping with a survey conducted by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2021, about 4.3% of the adult population within the U.S. reported they experienced migraines or severe headaches previously three months, with the proportion amongst women (6.2%) higher than that of men (2.2%).

In the most recent study, published within the journal PLOS Medicine, researchers from Aarhus University in Denmark studied the connection between migraines and an elevated risk of cardiovascular issues like strokes and heart attacks in women.

The team observed that folks, each men and girls, who experience frequent migraine headaches face an elevated risk of ischemic stroke, while the danger of getting a heart attack or hemorrhagic stroke is higher in women.

A stroke can occur when blood flow to the brain is blocked or there may be sudden bleeding within the brain.

There are two primary kinds of strokes:

• Ischemic stroke: It’s essentially the most common form of stroke where the arteries get blocked, often as a consequence of cholesterol build-up or a blood clot. The blockage prevents blood from reaching the brain.
• Hemorrhagic stroke: It occurs when there is a sudden bleeding within the brain as a consequence of a ruptured blood vessel, putting pressure on brain cells and damaging them.

Researchers went through the medical records of individuals in Denmark, aged 18 to 60 years, from 1996 to 2018. They identified individuals who had migraine headaches based on their drug prescription records. The team compared the danger of heart attack, ischemic stroke and hemorrhagic stroke before the age of 60 to the risks people in the overall population without migraine have.

Researchers found that each men and girls had a similarly increased risk of ischemic stroke. Additionally they noticed a gender-specific trend – women with migraine headaches were at a rather higher risk of heart attacks and hemorrhagic stroke in comparison with men.

Dr. Cecilia Hvitfeldt Fuglsang, a registrar within the Department of Clinical Epidemiology at Aarhus University and the lead creator of the study, said she wants doctors to concentrate on the association between migraine and cardiovascular risk for each men and girls.

“How we may modify this risk is less clear. The essential thing that will be done now could be to optimize the treatment of some other cardiovascular risk aspects and for example, encourage smoking cessation,” she told Medical News Today. “Also, it could be interesting to have a look at how we may diminish the danger of heart problems amongst individuals with migraine. This is able to, nevertheless, require a special form of data and study setup than what I’m currently working with.”

Previous studies have shown that folks with migraine headaches are also more more likely to suffer quite a lot of other mental and physical conditions like depression, epilepsy, fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), hearing difficulties, asthma and sleeping problems.

Published by Medicaldaily.com