Migraine More Than a Pain in the Head

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Migraine patients may have pain in places besides their head.

A new report from Albert Einstein College of Medicine finds people who get migraines are more likely to have severe skin sensitivity or pain from doing routine things such as rubbing their head, combing their hair, and wearing necklaces or earrings, compared to people who get other types of headaches.

When researchers surveyed 16,573 people who get headaches, they found 11,737 of them have migraine, 1,491 have probable migraine -- all but one of the symptoms required for diagnosis -- and 3,345 with another kind of headache.

Results show 68 percent of those who have headaches nearly every day and 63 percent of those who get them from time to time said they have allodynia -- the intense and unpleasant, painful skin sensitivity. The survey also found 42 percent of patients with probable migraine had the skin pain, compared to 37 percent of those with daily or tension headache.

“This condition causes discomfort or pain even during everyday activities like touching one’s hair or putting on clothes,” study author Marcelo E. Bigal, M.D., Ph.D., with the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, was quoted as saying. “More importantly, this condition may be a risk factor for migraine progression, where individuals have migraines on more days than not. It may be that individuals with allodynia should be more aggressively treated in order to prevent migraine progression, as well as to decrease this sensitivity on the skin.”

Researchers also found the skin pain was more common in women with migraine and migraine patients who were obese or had depression.

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SOURCE: Neurology, 2008;70:1525