High prevalence of headaches in patients with epilepsy

The Journal of Headache and Pain

Research Article

Min Wan¹  Yun-feng Ma¹  Xu Zhang¹  Xiao-bing Shi¹  Wei Dai¹  Ya-nan Chen¹  Sheng-yuan Yu¹  Xiang-qing Wang¹  Fei Zhu¹  Sen-yang Lang¹  Mian-wang He¹ 

[1] Department of Neurology, Chinese PLA General Hospital, Fuxing Road 28, Haidian District, 100853, Beijing, P.R. China;

关键词: Epilepsy;    Headache;    Migraine;    Headache on seizure-day;    Headache yesterday;    Postictal headache;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1129-2377-15-70

 received in 2014-08-23, accepted in 2014-10-29,  发布年份 2014

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundTo examine the association between headaches and epilepsy.MethodsConsecutive adult epileptic patients who went to the outpatient clinic of the Epilepsy Center of PLA General Hospital between February 01, 2012, and May 10, 2013, were recruited into this study. A total of 1109 patients with epilepsy completed a questionnaire regarding headaches.ResultsOverall, 60.1% of the patients (male: 57.2%; female: 63.8%) reported headaches within the last year. The age-weighted prevalence of interictal migraine was 11.7% (male 8.9%, female 15.3%), which is higher than that reported in a large population-based study (8.5%, male 5.4%, female 11.6%) using the same screening questions. The prevalence of postictal headaches was 34.1% (males 32.7%, females 35.2%), and the presence of preictal headaches was 4.5% (males 4.3%, females 5.2%). The prevalence of headache yesterday in the general population was 4.8% (male 3.0%, female 6.6%). Thus, the prevalence of headaches, including migraine, is higher in epileptic patients in China.ConclusionsThe high prevalence of postictal headaches confirms the frequent triggering of a headache by a seizure. A much lower frequency of preictal headaches, a condition in which the real triggering effect of the headache on the seizure might be difficult to prove.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Wang et al.; licensee Springer. 2014. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited.