Women and men who experience migraines have an increased risk of having the most common type of stroke, research has suggested.
Additionally, women alone may carry a further risk of heart attack and haemorrhagic stroke (bleeding in or around the brain).
People diagnosed with migraine are believed to have a higher risk of experiencing a heart attack or stroke before the age of 60.
Previous research had suggested the increased risk of ischemic stroke – when a blood clot blocks a blood vessel to the brain – mostly affects young women.
However, it was unclear whether women with migraine also carry a higher risk of heart attack and haemorrhagic stroke compared to men.
Cecilia Hvitfeldt Fuglsang, of Aarhus University, Denmark, and her team looked at Danish medical records collected from 1996 to 2018, from people aged 18 to 60.
They identified men and women with a history of migraines and compared their risk of a heart attack and ischemic and haemorrhagic stroke before the age of 60 to the risks faced by people in the general population without migraine.
Hvitfeldt Fuglsang said: “Migraine was associated with a similarly increased risk of ischemic stroke among young men and women.
“However, migraine may be associated with an increased risk of myocardial infarction and haemorrhagic stroke only among women.”
The findings suggest both men and women with migraine had a similarly increased risk of ischemic stroke.
However, women with migraine may also carry a slightly higher risk of heart attack and haemorrhagic stroke, compared to men with migraine and the general population.
Women are more greatly impacted by migraine, especially since the condition is predominantly diagnosed in women, the researchers suggest.
The researchers point out that since they used prescription drug records to identify patients with migraine, they may have missed untreated people, which could have resulted in an underestimation of the contribution of migraine to these health problems.
The findings are published in the Plos Medicine journal.
