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Adolescent girls who reach puberty at an earlier age may also be at greater risk of developing migraines, according to a new study by investigators from the College of Medicine at the University of Cincinnati (UC).
"We know that the percentage of girls and boys with migraine is almost the same until the rules begin," said Vincent Martin, MD, professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine and director of the Evil Center. head and pain in the face of Gardner University. Institute of Neuroscience. "When the rules start in girls, the prevalence increases dramatically, but what our data suggest is that it happens even before that."
The results will be presented by Martin at the 61st Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Headache Society on Saturday, July 13 in Philadelphia.
Nationally, about 10% of school-age children suffer from migraine, according to the Migraine Research Foundation (MRF). As adolescence approaches, the incidence of migraine rises rapidly among girls, and at age 17, about 8% of boys and 23% of girls had already had a migraine, according to the MRF.
Martin and a team of researchers participated in a longitudinal study of 761 adolescent girls from sites in Cincinnati, New York and the San Francisco Bay Area. The girls were between 8 and 20 years old and the study took place over a period of 10 years starting in 2004. The girls enrolled in the study between 8 and 10 years were examined during of the study visit every six to 12 months. The researchers determined when they showed the first signs of thelarche (bad development), pubarche (pubic hair growth) and menarche (early menses).
The girls answered a questionnaire on headaches to find out if they were suffering from migraine, the absence of migraine or probable migraine – the latter is defined as meeting all the diagnostic criteria for migraine, except one . The average age at which they responded to the survey was 16 years old.
Of those surveyed, 85 girls (11%) were diagnosed with migraine while 53 (7%) had probable migraine and 623 (82%) did not have migraine, according to Martin, also UC Health's medical doctor. specialized in migraine.
The researchers found that girls with migraine had an earlier age of the lip (bad development) and onset of the first rules (rules) than those without having migraine. On average, bad development occurred four months earlier in migraine patients when menstruation began five months earlier. There was no age difference of pubarches (development of pubic hair) between migraine sufferers and non-migraine sufferers.
"There was a 25% increase in the chances of having a migraine a year earlier, that a girl would have larvae or menarche," said Susan Pinney, PhD, professor in the department of environmental health and principal investigator of the study. "This suggests a strong relationship between precocious puberty and the development of adolescent migraine."
The age of onset of the disease, pubarche or menarche does not differ between those who have a probable migraine and those who do not have migraine, Pinney says.
Previous research suggests that migraine often begins with the onset of menstrual cycles during the first adolescent period. But this study looks at the early stages of puberty such as thelarche and pubarche, says Martin.
"It is quite novel to suggest that migraines could occur before the onset of menstruation," says Martin. "At each of these stages, different hormones begin to appear in girls.When pubarche, testosterone and androgens are present, and at the spot, it is the very first exposure to estrogen. The menarche corresponds to the appearance of a more mature hormonal pattern.Our study implies that the very first exposure to estrogen could be the starting point of migraine in some teenage girls.This could be the Big Bang theory of migraine. "
Is there anything that can be done to prevent early puberty?
"Studies suggest that childhood obesity is badociated with early puberty," said Martin, also president of the National Headache Foundation. "Reducing your weight could prevent the early onset of puberty, and further studies will be needed to determine if a strategy will also reduce the risk of developing a migraine."
Other co-investigators include Frank Biro, MD, UC professor in the pediatric and pediatric department of Cincinnati, Jun Ying, PhD, professor in the UC Environmental Health Department, and Hao Yu, biostatistician, health department Environmental Registry.
Funding for this research came from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Grant U01ES026119 and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Grant 1R03HD094236 .
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