Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Clinical studies revealed an increased incidence of migraine attacks in conditions with falling levels of plasma oestrogen in the perimenstrual phase of the menstrual cycle and during the hormone-free interval in women taking combined oral contraceptives.

Objective: The purpose of the study was to assess the connection between menstrual cycle, bleeding patterns of women with migraine and the clinical characteristics of the migraine attacks.

Methods: The questionnaire-based survey (n=186) was undertaken in the South-Eastern Hungary with the collaboration of the Department of Neurology and the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology. We invited all women with M0 and MA in the Outpatient Headache Unit of the Department of Neurology, Szeged, Hungary to participate in the questionnaire-based study. We collected a data in two time periods: between 2006–2009 and 2013–2014. We collected the answers via three ways: personal face-to-face interviews, online and postal way. The main outcome measures were to describe the menstrual pattern of women with migraine, the relationships between menstrual cycle and clinical characteristics of the migraine attacks.

Results: Our study group consisted of 108 (52%) women with M0 and 78 (48%) women with MA. The average age of the patients at the diagnosis of migraine was 18.79±6.97 years. The Pearson’s correlation test revealed a relationship between duration of menstrual cycle and the intensity of headache pain (P=0.012). However, there was no significant relation between the intensity of headache pain and other study parameters (e.g. duration of use of COC, length of bleeding, menstrual cramps, amount of bleeding, and BMI).

Conclusions: According to our best knowledge this is the first study in Hungary to describe contraceptive habits of migraineurs and the connection between the duration of menstrual cycle and intensity of the migraine head pain.