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Migraine and Stroke - Is There a Connection?

© Barbara J. Mitchell

You have an excruciating headache that strikes out of the blue. It's like nothing you've ever experienced before. If you've been reading this series of articles, you know that means you need to get yourself to the emergency room immediately because it's so likely this is a symptom of something serious. It could even be a stroke.

Do you know the symptoms of stroke? They can strike a person of any age, so you should recognize the following symptoms I found at http://familydoctor.org/handouts/290.htm...

~ Sudden weakness or numbness of the face, arm or leg on one side of the body.

~ Sudden dimness or loss of vision, particularly in one eye.

~ Loss of speech, trouble talking or understanding what others are saying.

~ Sudden severe headache with no known cause.

~ Unexplained dizziness, unstable walking or falling, especially along with any of the other symptoms.

Thus far, we're on solid ground. Everyone agrees that such a headache can signal a stroke. Whether there is a connection between migraine and stroke, a so-called migrainous stroke, is more controversial.

Some studies seem to indicate that migraine, in particular migraine with aura, is a risk factor for stroke and that is especially so in young women. Smoking adds to that risk, of course, as does high blood pressure, but another risk factor is more unsettling - taking oral contraceptives.

The Imperial College School of Medicine and the Radcliffe Infirmary claim that young women with a personal history of migraine have 3 1/2 times the risk of ischemic stroke as those who don't have migraine.

Incidentally, ischemic stroke is caused by lack of blood flow to the brain because something is blocking it in a blood vessel. Hemorrhagic stroke is caused by the rupture of a blood vessel. Other terms you run into with ischemic stroke are thrombotic, which simply means the blockage occurs in the brain, and embolic, which means a clot forms elsewhere in the body and travels to the brain.

Back to the study above, researchers studied 291 women who had had a stroke. Their ages ranged from 20 to 44. Between 20 and 40% of those strokes apparently began with a migraine. They also discovered that a family history of migraines with or without a personal history of it increased stroke risk.

Another study done by an Italian university showed that most people who have migraine with aura have a low risk of stroke, yet it is 3 times greater than people who have migraine without aura and perhaps as much as 8 times the risk of people who don't have migraine at all.

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