Migraine tied to increased risk for hypertension in menopausal women
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Women with migraine had an increased risk for hypertension after menopause, but there were no significant differences between migraine with and without aura, according to a longitudinal cohort study launched in 1990.
“Migraine, especially migraine with aura, has been identified as a risk factor for cardiovascular disease,” Conor James MacDonald, PhD, of the French Institute of Health and Medical Research and Center for Research in Epidemiology and Population Health at the Institut Gustave Roussy in Villejuif, France, and colleagues wrote in Neurology. “It is less clear how history of migraine could be associated with hypertension after menopause.”
MacDonald and colleagues conducted a prospective, longitudinal cohort study of 56,202 women aged 40 to 65 years at baseline who did not have hypertension or CVD when menopause began (mean age at menopause, 50.4 years). Participants completed questionnaires every 2 to 3 years from 1990 until 2014 and self-reported whether they had migraine or hypertension. The researchers used insurance data to verify migraine and hypertension. They completed a secondary analysis assessing migraine with vs. without aura; data collection for this analysis began in 2011.
Among 12,501 cases of incident hypertension, 3,100 occurred in women with migraine and 9,401 occurred in women without migraine. Menopausal women with migraine had an increased risk for hypertension (HR = 1.29; 95% CI, 1.24-1.35); the researchers wrote that this association persisted when controlling for migraine medications and other post-hoc sensitivity analyses.
According to the researchers, the association between migraine and hypertension was similar among women with migraine who did and did not report aura, but there was a “slightly stronger” association among women who ever used menopausal hormone therapy (HR = 1.34; 95% CI, 1.27-1.41) compared with those who never used menopausal hormone therapy (HR = 1.19; 95% CI, 1.11-1.28).
“Hypertension and migraine are both common disorders in women, but relatively few longitudinal cohort studies have been conducted to understand this relationship, and none in only menopausal women,” the researchers wrote. “In this longitudinal cohort study, we confirmed previous observations that migraine is associated with an increased risk of incident hypertension in menopausal women.”