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. 2011 Oct;31(14):1459-65.
doi: 10.1177/0333102411421682. Epub 2011 Sep 16.

Associations between lipid levels and migraine: cross-sectional analysis in the epidemiology of vascular ageing study

Pamela M Rist  1 , Christophe Tzourio, Tobias Kurth
Affiliations

Associations between lipid levels and migraine: cross-sectional analysis in the epidemiology of vascular ageing study

Pamela M Rist et al. Cephalalgia. 2011 Oct.

Abstract

Background: Migraine with aura has been associated with increased prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors, including elevated levels of some vascular biomarkers. However, little research has been done on this association among the elderly. We examined the associations of lipid levels with headache and migraine in a cohort of elderly individuals.

Methods: Cross-sectional study among 1155 participants enrolled in the Epidemiology of Vascular Ageing Study with available information on headache and blood biomarkers. We used multinomial logistic regression to evaluate the association between biomarker tertiles and headache categories.

Results: 925 people had no severe headache, 64 people had non-migraine headache and 166 people had migraine, of whom 23 had aura. Compared with participants without headache, we observed strong associations between increasing tertiles of total cholesterol and migraine with aura. The odds ratio (95% confidence interval) was 4.67 (0.99-21.97) for the 2nd tertile and 5.97 (1.29-27.61) for the 3rd tertile. We also found strong associations between triglycerides and migraine with aura (odds ratio for 3rd tertile: 4.42 (1.32-14.77)). We did not see significant associations between increased biomarker levels and any other headache group.

Conclusions: Elevated levels of total cholesterol and triglycerides are associated with migraine with aura but not other headache forms in the elderly.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare there are no conflicts of interest but are listing our full disclosures for the last 2 years:

Pamela M. Rist has received funding from a training grant from the National Institute of Aging (AG00158), from the Rose Traveling Fellowship Program in Chronic Disease Epidemiology and Biostatistics from the Harvard School of Public Health, and from a travel fund from the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Dr. Tzourio has received investigator-initiated research funding from the French National Research Agency (ANR) and receiving fees from Sanofi-Synthelabo for participating in a data safety monitoring board and from Merck Sharp & Dohme and the Servier company for participating in scientific committees.

Dr. Kurth has received investigator-initiated research funding from the National Institutes of Health, the French National Research Agency (ANR, Agence Nationale pour la Recherche), Merck, the Migraine Research Foundation, and the Parkinson’s Disease Research Foundation. He is a consultant to World Health Information Science Consultants, LLC; he has received honoraria from the American Academy of Neurology and Merck for educational lectures and from MAP Pharmaceutical for contributing to a scientific advisory panel.

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