Obesity and Paediatric Migraine

Abstract

This study investigates the influence of obesity on the severity of migraine in children. One hundred and twenty-four patients (77 female, 36 with aura; mean age 12.9 ± 2.8 years; age range 4.0–17.0 years) were included. Headache features such as number and duration of attacks, pain severity and associated symptoms were compared between obese, overweight and normal weight patients. The percentage of obesity was 17.7. Although pain severity and duration were not different among groups, obese patients had more frequent attacks than the overweight and normal weight patients (5.3 ± 2.4, 4.4 ± 2.4 and 3.8 ± 2.4 attacks/month, respectively, P = 0.018). There was also a positive correlation between relative body mass index and number of attacks (P = 0.026, r = 0.20). Obesity did not have an influence on migraine-associated symptoms including aura, phono/photophobia, nausea and vomiting. In this study, obesity appeared to be related to the frequency of headache attacks in children and adolescents with migraine.