Migraines boost teens' suicide risk- Taiwan study

CHICAGO, Apr 30 (Reuters) Adolescents with daily headaches -- and especially those with migraines -- may be at greater risk of suicide, Taiwanese researchers reported.

They said young teens with migraines, a debilitating kind of headache, are also at higher risk for other psychiatric disorders, such as depression and panic disorder.

The researchers evaluated 7,900 students aged 12 to 14 at five middle schools in Taiwan. Writing in the journal Neurology, the researchers found that 20 percent of 121 Taiwanese middle school students they identified with chronic daily headaches were at high risk of suicide.

The teens' suicide risk was assessed using a standardized questionnaire that ranks suicidal thoughts and associated behaviors said the report yesterday.

Nearly half of those with chronic daily headaches had one or more psychiatric disorder, with 21 percent having major depression and 19 percent having panic disorder.

''These numbers are much higher than those reported among the general population of teens of the same ages in Taiwan,'' study author Shuu-Jiun Wang of the National Yang-Ming University School of Medicine in Taipei said in a statement.

Dr Thomas Swift, president of the American Academy of Neurology, who treats patients with migraine, said the study was intriguing but small.

''I have a feeling this is probably going to turn out to be right, but it needs to be validated in a larger group of patients,'' Swift said in a telephone interview.

''This was a total of 121 subjects,'' he said. ''You need to do this in the thousands.'' Of those, the 121 teens identified with chronic daily headaches were screened for psychiatric disorders. The researchers defined chronic headaches, including chronic migraines, as headaches occurring 15 or more days per month and lasting two or more hours for three months.

They found that adolescents with migraine headaches were 3.5 times more likely to have a psychiatric disorder than those without migraines.

Migraines are an especially painful form of headache marked by dizziness, nausea, vomiting and extreme sensitivity to light and sound. Women are three times more likely than men to get migraines, a condition that affects about 28 million people in the United States alone.

The researchers said adolescents whose migraines came with an aura, a series of visual disturbances that can include flashes of light or black spots, were six times more likely to be at high suicide risk than those without migraine.

Reuters RJ VP1015