The prevalence of chronic and episodic migraine in children and adolescents
European Journal of Neurology, 08/09/2012

Ozge A et al. – The results showed that chronic migraine (CM) is an important cause of headache in both children and adolescents with some defining headache characteristics and risk factors concentrated in different age–groups.

• To evaluate the prevalence and determinants of migraine in children and adolescents, the authors performed this school-based epidemiological study.
• First part of the study was performed in 2001 that included 5562 children.
• Second part of the study was performed in 2007 in adolescents including 1155 young.
• After the main reports published, they made a new analysis in the database that focused on migraine.

• Totally, 10.4% of the children, predominantly the girls, received the diagnosis of migraine when they grew older (1.7% CM, 8.6% EM).
• CM frequency increased with increasing ages (doubled at 12 years, P=0.035).
• The significant risk factors for having CM were found to be age, gender, and father and sibling headache histories.
• Most of the clinical characteristics of migraine are far from classical knowledge in children with CM.
• In adolescents, 18.6% were diagnosed as migraine (1.5%CM, 17.1%EM) with a predominance of girls without age difference.
• When they reached puberty after six years, double the number of cases with CM was headache free.
• Most of the young changed their headache characteristics during the follow-up period independent from management strategies.