Impact of Headache Frequency and Sleep on Migraine Patients During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

BACKGROUND

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has spread worldwide and poses a great threat to global health. COVID-19 has also an unneglected effect on migraine patients. Migraine attack frequency is one of the migraine characteristics, and its impact during COVID-19 needs further research. We aimed to evaluate whether migraine attack frequency during the COVID-19 pandemic differed from pre-COVID-19 attack frequency and explore possible influencing factors during the pandemic.

METHODS

This prospective cohort study enrolled 187 migraine patients from the Department of Neurology of West China Hospital from October 2019 to December 2019. After the inclusion and exclusion criteria, a total of 157 patients were included. We collected demographic data, clinical characteristics, and epidemiological contact information and followed up on March 2020. Then, paired-samples T-tests, logistic regression and interaction tests were used to analyze the data.

RESULTS

We found that the migraine attack frequency was 2.47 ± 1.12 before and 3.54 ± 1.79 during COVID-19 (P<0.0001). Then, we divided patients into two groups based on the difference in migraine attack frequency between the COVID-19 and pre-COVID-19 periods and employed logistic regression analysis. In the logistic regression analysis, divorced status (OR = 6.53, P = 0.0453), good sleep pre-COVID-19 and poor sleep during COVID-19 (OR = 3.11, P = 0.0432) had independent effects on migraine attack frequency during the COVID-19 pandemic. We found no interaction in poor sleep during COVID-19 between various subgroups.

CONCLUSION

We found that migraineurs' headache attacks were more frequent during COVID-19 than pre-COVID-19 and that increased migraine attack frequency was independently related to divorced status and poor sleep during COVID-19.