Migraine and traumatic brain injury: a cohort study in Taiwan.

OBJECTIVE

Traumatic brain injury is now a major contributor to the global healthcare burden. Migraine is another debilitating disease with a global health impact. While most researchers agree that traumatic brain injury is a risk factor for migraine, whether migraine is a risk factor for traumatic brain injury still remains under debate. We therefore aimed to investigate whether migraine was a risk factor for developing traumatic brain injury.

STUDY DESIGN

Retrospective population-based cohort study.

SETTING

Data for people who had been diagnosed with migraine were retrieved from Taiwan's National Health Insurance Research Database.

PARTICIPANTS

We identified 7267 patients with newly diagnosed migraine during 1996-2010. The migraineurs to non-migraineurs ratio was set at 1:4 to enhance the power of statistical tests.

PRIMARY AND SECONDARY OUTCOME MEASURES

We used multivariate Cox proportional hazard regression models to assess the effects of migraines on the risk of traumatic brain injury after adjusting for potential confounders.

RESULTS

The overall traumatic brain injury risk was 1.78 times greater in the migraine group compared with the non-migraine group after controlling for covariates. Additionally, patients with previous diagnoses of alcohol-attributed disease, mental disorders and diabetes mellitus had a significantly higher traumatic brain injury risk compared with those with no history of these diagnoses.

CONCLUSIONS

This study of a population-based database indicated that migraine is a traumatic brain injury risk factor. Greater attention to migraine-targeted treatment modalities may reduce traumatic brain injury-related morbidity and mortality.