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. 2020 Oct 5:13:2423-2430.
doi: 10.2147/JPR.S270847. eCollection 2020.

Prevalence of Migraine and its Relationship with Psychological Stress and Sleep Quality in Female University Students in Saudi Arabia

Nazish Rafique  1 , Lubna Ibrahim Al-Asoom  1 , Rabia Latif  1 , Ahmed A Alsunni  1 , Ayad Mohammed Salem  1 , Zainab Hameed Alkhalifa  2 , Rana Mohammed Almaharfi  2 , Rawan Sami Alramadan  2 , Zainab Falah Aldajani  2 , Fatimah Abdulmuttalib Taher Alghadeer  2 , Laila Abbas Albaghli  2
Affiliations

Prevalence of Migraine and its Relationship with Psychological Stress and Sleep Quality in Female University Students in Saudi Arabia

Nazish Rafique et al. J Pain Res. .

Abstract

Purpose: This study aimed to determine the prevalence of migraine in young female adults and to identify if a relationship exists between psychological stress or poor sleep quality and migraine.

Materials and methods: This case control study was carried out at Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University (IAU), Dammam, KSA from March 2019 to March 2020 on 1,990 female students (17- to 26-years-old). The study tools were Migraine Screening Questionnaire (MS-Q), International Headache Society (IHS) Criteria for Migraine, K10 Psychological Distress Instrument (K10) and Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI).

Results: A total of 103 out of 1,990 (5.17%) participants were identified to have migraine. Migraineurs compared to controls had significantly higher average stress scores; felt more tired, nervous, restless, could not sit still, felt that everything was an effort, and nothing cheered them up (p values; 0.008, 0.001, 0.02, 0.01, 0.004, 0.009, 0.02 respectively). Moreover, presence of migraine was significantly correlated with various stress parameters including "High K10 scores," "being tired," "being nervous," "restlessness," "inability to sit still," and "feeling that everything is an effort" (p values: 0.01, 0.002, 0.018, 0.01,0.005, 0.01,0.02). Regarding sleep quality and sleep parameters, no statistically significant difference was found between migraineurs and controls. No correlation was found between presence of migraine and poor sleep quality.

Conclusions: The results of this study indicate that 5.17% of young females (17- to 26-years-old) suffer from migraine. It also concludes that poor sleep quality is not correlated with migraine, whereas high stress scores are significantly correlated with migraine in young female adults.

Keywords: migraineurs; poor sleep quality; sleep parameters; stress scores.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.

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