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Abstract

Objects: This is the first study done in our country on a cohort sample sized population to estimate the prevalence of migraine across various age groups. Methods: This door-to-door study was done in Assiut district, throughout one year (2009). The study included 4700 randomly selected individuals. The sample was classified according to the percentage of population in urban and rural places. Diagnosis of migraine was done according to the International Headache Society (IHS) diagnostic criteria (2004). Results: headache was reported in 1668 subjects (35.49%), of them, 87.65% (n=1462) had primary headaches and 12.35% (n=206) had secondary headaches. Migraine prevalence was 10.51% (female=14.9%; male=6.2%). It was nearly equal in both sexes before age of 20 but higher between 20-40 years, particular in females (70.8%) (Female-to-male ratio= 2.4:1). The mean age of patients was 24.8±11 years for males and 34.2±13.2 years for females. The mean age at onset of migraine lower in males (males=15.1±7.6 versus 27.9±11.7 years for females; P=0.0001). Nearly 65.2% of migraine attacks were severe enough to stop daily activities in females compared to males (40.7%), while moderate severity were 34.8% and 59.3% in females and males respectively. Nearly 32.5% of attacks were >1 day in females compared to 14.5% for males, the remaining had attack duration ranged from 4 to 24 hours. Nearly 63.5% had frequent attacks (1-14/month), 31% had chronic or daily attacks, 24.2% had transformation from episodic to chronic migraine within 6.1±4.4 years, 5.6% had migraine as chronic phenomena from the start and 1.2% had daily migraine from the start. Chronic or daily migraine was more in females (35.3 versus 20.7% for males). Migraine was prevalent in low socio-economic states and low educational levels. It was reported that the duration of migraine attacks reduced with age but the chronic and daily migraine increased with age while higher frequency and longer duration of attacks were predictors of severe migraine, while higher frequency was predictor of prolonged attacks. Hypertension, anxiety, irritable bowel syndrome and depression were common co-morbidities with migraine. Also migraine, hypertension and diabetes mellitus were common in the families of migraine patients. Conclusion: We believe that our informative study which determined the actual size of the problem and the important predictors of change of the severity, duration and frequency of migraine.

Biography

Sherifa A. Hamed (M.D.) is an Associate Professor of Neurology and the director of the Neurogenetic unit in Assiut University, Egypt. She worked as a postdoctoral fellow (visiting scholar, 8/1998 to 8/2000) in USA [in Research Center for Genetic Medicine, Children?s National Medical Center, Dept. Integrative Systems Biology, George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences]. She was a part of a multidisciplinary research program concerning disease gene identifi cation of muscular dystrophies. She served as a reviewer for 30 medical journals and has a least 70 international publications in the fi elds of Neurology, Neurogenetics and Neuropsychopharmacology.