The Epidemiology of Migraine in Medical Students

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the prevalence of migraine in medical students, as well as its clinical aspects and impact. All 595 medical students of Santa Casa School of Medicine of São Paulo, Brazil were asked if they had experienced any kind of headache in the past year. Those who responded positively were further investigated by an appropriate questionnaire. Diagnosis of migraine was based on the International Headache Society criteria of 1988. Forty percent of students suffered from some kind of headache; 40.2% of these headaches were migraine. The prevalence of migraine was 54.4% in women and 28.3% in men. Migraine headaches were unilateral in 24.2%, had a gradual onset in 69%, and were of a throbbing type in 88.3%. Migraine was considered incapacitating by 53.9% of students. Migraine with aura caused more disability than migraine without aura. Women experienced more intense migraine than men, and migraine with aura was especially more severe than migraine without aura. Photophobia, phonophobia, and nausea were more commonly encountered in migraine with aura. Despite the high prevalence, the high rate of disability, and the need for analgesic medication, only 7.1% of students with migraine had sought medical treatment.

Headache among medical and psychology students

“…Our findings of higher pre valence of headaches among women is consistent with several other studies 5,[6][7][8][9][10]21,22 . In our study, the overall lifetime headache prevalence among men (97%) and women (100%) and the last-year prevalence among men (86%) and women (93%) were comparable with previous reports by Deleu et al 9 and Costa et al 6 .…”

“…Studying headaches among university students is important, based on the premise that this population may be more subject to headaches than the general population, for reasons relating to academic life that are known to trigger headaches 5,10,12 , such as emotional stress and poor sleeping and feeding habits (including abusive use of caffeine and other psychoactive substances). Medical students and psychology students are similarly exposed to risk factors that trigger headaches and, in our study, we recruited students from the Schools of Medicine and Psychology for convenience sampling.…”

“…In their cohort, 76% of females and 57% of males reported having at least one headache episode per month. Sanvito et al 5 identified that the prevalence of diverse types of headaches among medical students at Santa Casa of São Paulo Medical School was 47% and that the prevalence of migraines was 40% among the same students. Fifty-four percent of the students who reported headaches were females and 28% were males, in a sample of 595 students.…”

Clinical Profile of Migraine Headache with Special Reference to Trigger Factors in Medical College Set Up

“…In our sample, 552 (79.7%) of the study subjects belonged to 18-25 years of age constituting the majority. Our study showed high prevalence of migraine in females 461(62.1%) compared to that of males 236(33.8%), as already demonstrated in previous studies conducted by Bindu Menon et al [17] , Galinovic et al [18] and Sanvico et al [19] . However this finding should be interpreted with caution as our sample had more female participants.…”

Prevalência e impacto da migrânea em funcionários do Hospital das Clínicas da Faculdade de Medicina de Ribeirão Preto - USP

“…Rassmussen, na Dinamarca, encontrou prevalência ao longo da vida entre 93 e 96% 2 . Pesquisas realizadas no Brasil chegaram a resultados semelhantes 14 . No entanto, considera-se classicamente a prevalência da cefaléia do tipo tensional como sendo maior que a da migrânea.…”