Migraines unlikely to impair cognitive function

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People who suffer from migraine headaches over their lifetime do not appear to be at increased risk for cognitive deficits, findings from a study of Danish twins suggest.

“We believe that migraineurs should find it reassuring that the present study found no evidence of a link between migraine and cognitive skills,” study investigators write in the February 22nd issue of Neurology.

Previous reports have yielded mixed results regarding an association between migraines—characterized by throbbing pain, nausea and light- and noise-sensitivity—and impaired cognitive function.

The conflicting findings may be explained, in part, by differences in the selection of study subjects, sample size, and how the migraine diagnosis was established.

In an effort to overcome some of these issues, Dr. David Gaist, from the University of Southern Denmark in Odense, and colleagues analyzed data from subjects entered in the Danish Twin Registry. Twins with a positive screening test for migraine were invited to be interviewed by a neurologist, who verified the headache diagnosis.

A total of 1789 twins were eligible for the study, of whom 1393 were interviewed by a neurologist. Overall, 347 twins were diagnosed with migraine without aura and 157 with migraine with aura.
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According to investigators, migraine patients performed no better or worse on any cognitive function test than patients without migraine. This held true within the twin pair comparisons and after adjusting for potential confounding factors.

The authors of a commentary on the study point out that the “the absence of a general cognitive deficit in migraine patients, while reassuring, does not rule out the existence of deficits in specific psychologic domains.”

SOURCE: Neurology, February 22, 2005.

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