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. 2012 Aug 8:345:e5027.
doi: 10.1136/bmj.e5027.

Migraine and cognitive decline among women: prospective cohort study

Pamela M Rist  1 , Jae H Kang, Julie E Buring, M Maria Glymour, Fran Grodstein, Tobias Kurth
Affiliations

Migraine and cognitive decline among women: prospective cohort study

Pamela M Rist et al. BMJ. .

Abstract

Objective: To evaluate the association between migraine and cognitive decline among women.

Design: Prospective cohort study.

Setting: Women's Health Study, United States.

Participants: 6349 women aged 65 or older enrolled in the Women's Health Study who provided information about migraine status at baseline and participated in cognitive testing during follow-up. Participants were classified into four groups: no history of migraine, migraine with aura, migraine without aura, and past history of migraine (reports of migraine history but no migraine in the year prior to baseline).

Main outcome measures: Cognitive testing was carried out at two year intervals up to three times using the telephone interview for cognitive status, immediate and delayed recall trials of the east Boston memory test, delayed recall trial of the telephone interview for cognitive status 10 word list, and a category fluency test. All tests were combined into a global cognitive score, and tests assessing verbal memory were combined to create a verbal memory score.

Results: Of the 6349 women, 853 (13.4%) reported any migraine; of these, 195 (22.9%) reported migraine with aura, 248 (29.1%) migraine without aura, and 410 (48.1%) a past history of migraine. Compared with women with no history of migraine, those who experienced migraine with or without aura or had a past history of migraine did not have significantly different rates of cognitive decline in any of the cognitive scores: values for the rate of change of the global cognitive score between baseline and the last observation ranged from -0.01 (SE 0.04) for past history of migraine to 0.08 (SE 0.04) for migraine with aura when compared with women without any history of migraine. Women who experienced migraine were also not at increased risk of substantial cognitive decline (worst 10% of the distribution of decline). When compared with women without a history of migraine, the relative risks for the global score ranged from 0.77 (95% confidence interval 0.46 to 1.28) for women with migraine without aura to 1.17 (0.84 to 1.63) for women with a past history of migraine.

Conclusion: In this prospective cohort of women, migraine status was not associated with faster rates of cognitive decline.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: All authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form at www.icmje.org/coi_disclosure.pdf (available on request from the corresponding author) and declare: that this study has been funded by the US National Institutes of Health; PMR was funded by a training grant from the US National Institute of Aging and has received funding from the Rose Traveling Fellowship Program in Chronic Disease Epidemiology and Biostatistics from the Harvard School of Public Health and received a travel grant from the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health; JHK has received investigator initiated funding from the US National Institutes of Health, American Heart Association, and Wyeth (now Pfizer) Pharmaceuticals; JEB has received investigator initiated research funding and support from the US National Institutes of Health and Dow Corning, and research support for pills or packaging from Bayer HealthCare and the Natural Source Vitamin E Association; MMG receives or has received research support from the US National Institutes of Health, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health and Society Scholars Program, the MacArthur Foundation Network on Socioeconomic Status and Health, the Milton Fund for Harvard University Junior Faculty, and the American Heart Association; FG has received investigator initiated funding from the US National Institutes of Health and the California Strawberry Council; TK has received investigator initiated research funding from the French National Research Agency, the US National Institutes of Health, Merck, the Migraine Research Foundation, and the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation, and honorariums from the BMJ for editorial services, Allergan, the American Academy of Neurology, Merck for educational lectures, and MAP Pharmaceutical for contributing to a scientific advisory panel; and no other relationships or activities that could appear to have influenced the submitted work.

Figures

None
Flow chart of participation in migraine and cognitive decline study among women enrolled in the Women’s Health Study
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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