Good And Bad Migraine News

1 min

First, the good news: a new investigation from France found that women with migraines are at lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes. This finding came from reviewing data on more than 70,000 women in that country who responded to health and lifestyle questionnaires every few years between 1990 and 2014. Results showed that women with active migraines were 30 percent less likely to develop type 2 diabetes compared to women who had no history of the headaches. Because the investigation was observational, it didn’t reveal whether migraine reduces the risk of type 2 diabetes or whether factors that increase or reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes affect the risk of migraines. However, the data did show that for some women migraines declined in the years preceding a diagnosis of diabetes. The bad news about migraines is that they can be triggered by alcoholic beverages, at least this was the case in 35.6 percent of the 2,197 patients participating in a European study. The researchers found that more than 25 percent of the participants who stopped drinking alcohol or never consumed it did so because of its presumed effect in initiating migraines. The most common alcoholic trigger seen in the study was red wine, although it led to attacks in only 8.8 percent of the study population.

Sources:
Guy Fagherazzi et al, “Associations Between Migraine and Type 2 Diabetes in Women: Findings from the E3N Cohort Study.” JAMA Neurology, December 17, 2018, doi”.10.1001/jamaneurol.2018.3960

Gisela M. Terwindt et al, “Alcoholic beverages as trigger factor and the effect on alcohol consumption behavior in patients with migraine.” European Journal of Neurology, December 18, 2018; DOI: 10.1111/ene.13861

Also in this week’s bulletin: