Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Meta-Analysis
. 2022 Feb 10;17(2):e0263628.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0263628. eCollection 2022.

The association between migraine and breast cancer risk: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Elahe Hesari  1 , Mozhgan Ahmadinezhad  1 , Maedeh Arshadi  1 , Hosein Azizi  1   2 , Farzad Khodamoradi  1
Affiliations
Meta-Analysis

The association between migraine and breast cancer risk: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Elahe Hesari et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Background: Migraines is likely to play a protective role in the risk of breast cancer. Some studies have shown that there is an inverse relationship between migraine and breast cancer, and some studies have not found an association; therefore, results from previous studies have been inconclusive and we conducted a meta-analysis to evaluate association between migraine and breast cancer.

Methods: PubMed, EMBASE, Scopus and Web of Science were searched to identify studies on the association between migraine and breast cancer from January 1, 2000 through March 12, 2021. The pooled relative risk (RR) and the 95% confidence intervals (CI) was used to measure this relationship by assuming a random effects meta-analytic model.

Results: A total of 10 studies were included. Our study revealed that there was statistically significant inverse relationship between migraine and breast cancer in case-control studies 0.68 [95% CI: 0.56, 0.82], but no significant relationship was found in cohort studies 0.98 [95% CI: 0.91, 1.06]. Also, migraine reduced the risk of ductal carcinoma 0.84 [95% CI: 0.73, 0.96], and lobular carcinoma 0.83 [95% CI: 0.73, 0.96]. With respect to ER_PR status no association between migraine and breast cancer was found. We found no evidence of publication bias.

Conclusion: Our analysis demonstrated a statistically significantly inverse relationship between migraine and total risk of breast cancer only in case-control studies. In summary, cohort studies do not support an inverse association between migraine and incident breast cancer. While in case-control studies, migraine has an inverse association with ductal carcinoma and lobular carcinoma of breast.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Flow chart depicting the study selection process (screening).
Fig 2
Fig 2. Forest plot of the association between migraine and breast cancer by study design.
Fig 3
Fig 3. Forest plot of the association between migraine and breast cancer by histologic subtype.
Fig 4
Fig 4. Forest plot of the association between migraine and breast cancer by hormone receptor status.
CI = confidence interval; ER = estrogen receptor; PR = progesterone receptor; RR = relative risk.
Fig 5
Fig 5. Funnel plot for publication bias.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Hortobagyi G.N., et al.., The global breast cancer burden: variations in epidemiology and survival. Clinical breast cancer, 2005. 6(5): p. 391–401. doi: 10.3816/cbc.2005.n.043 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Breast cancer. 2021; Available from: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/breast-cancer.
    1. Althuis M.D., et al.., Etiology of hormone receptor–defined breast cancer: a systematic review of the literature. Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention Biomarkers, 2004. 13(10): p. 1558–1568. - PubMed
    1. Crandall C.J., et al.., Breast cancer, endometrial cancer, and cardiovascular events in participants who used vaginal estrogen in the Women’s Health Initiative Observational Study. Menopause (New York, NY), 2018. 25(1): p. 11. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Arnesen S., et al.., Estrogen receptor alpha mutations in breast cancer cells cause gene expression changes through constant activity and secondary effects. Cancer Research, 2021. 81(3): p. 539–551. doi: 10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-20-1171 - DOI - PMC - PubMed