Study Investigates Association Between Migraine Diagnoses and Dementia

A study to be published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease explored the connection between migraine diagnoses and dementia in persons followed in general practices in Britain, reports News-Medical . Included were individuals who had received a migraine diagnosis in one of 67 U.K. general practices between January 1997 and December 2016. Inclusion criteria featured an observation time of at least one year before the index date, a follow-up window of at least 12 months after the index date, being between 60 and 80 years old at the index date, and no diagnosis of dementia or mild cognitive impairment before or at the index date. Within a decade of the index date, 5.2 percent of the 3,727 participants with and 3.7 percent of the 3,727 participants without migraine diagnoses received a dementia diagnosis — of whom 5.8 percent and 3.6 percent were women and 4.5 percent and 3.4 percent were men in those respective cohorts. "Several biological and clinical hypotheses may explain the association between migraine headaches and dementia," said the University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines' Louis Jacob. "For example, migraine headaches involve chronic pain, which has been found to substantially impact the risk of memory decline and dementia. As women usually have more severe migraine attacks, the risk of dementia in women with migraine could be higher than in men with migraine."