April 22, 2010 -
PRLog -- Dr. Lee Peterlin and colleagues presented their study evaluating the association between episodic migraineurs and post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and between chronic daily headache sufferers and PTSD. Over a one year period, the researchers found that 14.3% of those with episodic and 11.3% of chronic daily headache sufferers had PTSD, whereas only 2.1% of those who did not have headaches had PTSD. Episodic migraineurs had over a four-fold increased risk of PTSD as compared those without headache and chronic daily headache sufferers had over a two and a half fold increased risk as compared to those without headache. And while no gender differences in the risk of PTSD was seen in those with chronic daily headache, men with episodic migraine had over a three times greater risk of PTSD than women with episodic migraine.
Dr. Peterlin noted that these findings suggests that migraineurs (and in particular male migraineurs)
and chronic daily headache sufferers should be screened specifically for PTSD as different treatment strategies may be available for those headache sufferers with PTSD.
