Women with Migraines During Pregnancy at Significantly Increased Risk for Vascular Disease

The study, which appears in this month’s issue of the British Medical Journal, found that in addition to an increased risk of stroke, women who suffer from migraines while pregnant are two times more likely to have heart disease and more than three times more likely to have blood clots and other vascular problems during pregnancy.

“Good prenatal care is essential,” said Cheryl Bushnell, M.D., a neurologist at Wake Forest Baptist and lead investigator of the study. “Women with persistent and severe migraine during pregnancy should be aware of their risk factors, such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, history of blood clots, heart disease and prior stroke. There also seems to be a relationship between migraines and preeclampsia, one of the most common and dangerous complications of pregnancy.”

The study also found that women who were 35 or older when they delivered were more likely to have migraines during pregnancy, Bushnell said.

“Migraines, particularly those associated with an aura or visual changes around the time of the headache, have been previously linked to stroke and heart disease in women,” she said. “This study further validates the association between the two.”

Migraine headache is a neurovascular disorder that occurs in up to 26 percent of women of childbearing age. Women 40 years of age or older were 2.4 times more likely to have a migraine than women under 20 years of age and white women were more likely to have migraine headaches than other races/ethnic groups.

“While some women experience relief from migraine headaches while pregnant, others have migraines that are more frequent and severe,” Bushnell said. “The reasons these severe migraines are associated with stroke and vascular disease is not clear but it may be that some women do not compensate as well for the increased vascular stresses of pregnancy, such as increased blood volume, stroke volume and heart rate. Regardless of the cause, active migraine during pregnancy should be viewed as a potential marker of vascular disease.”

The study was funded in part by the National Institutes of Health. Co-researchers on the study included Andra H. James, M.D., M.P.H., of Duke University Medical Center, and Margaret Jamison, Ph.D., of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

                                                              ###

Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center (www.wfubmc.edu) is an academic health system comprised of North Carolina Baptist Hospital, Brenner Children’s Hospital, Wake Forest University Physicians, and Wake Forest University Health Sciences, which operates the university’s School of Medicine and Piedmont Triad Research Park. The system comprises 1,056 acute care, rehabilitation and long-term care beds and has been ranked as one of “America’s Best Hospitals” by U.S. News & World Report since 1993. Wake Forest Baptist is ranked 32nd in the nation by America’s Top Doctors for the number of its doctors considered best by their peers. The institution ranks in the top third in funding by the National Institutes of Health and fourth in the Southeast in revenues from its licensed intellectual property.