Boğaziçi Tıp Dergisi (Oct 2022)

Is There Any Relation with Chronic Headache Disorder and Dementia?

  • Mustafa Ülker

DOI
https://doi.org/10.14744/bmj.2022.13471
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 9, no. 3
pp. 151 – 155

Abstract

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INTRODUCTION: Headache disorders can be reasonably speculated to be associated with the increased risk of dementia. However, the current evidence from longitudinal studies linking headache disorders to dementia is scarce, and study populations are often too small to detect clinically relevant associations. In this study, we investigated the incidence of chronic headache history in the dementia population in comparison with the age-matched non-demented control group. METHODS: A total of 122 dementia patients and 114 age-matched non-demented people admitted to outpatient clinic for any complaints other than headache in dates between January 2022 and June 2022 included in this study. Dementia patients who were classified as Alzheimer disease, vascular dementia, mixed dementia, frontotemporal dementia, and Parkinson-related dementia were selected. Mini-mental test score (MMSE) was used to assess the severity of the cognitive impairment. Headache subtypes were classified as migraine headache, episodic tension type headache, and chronic tension-type headache according to International Headache Classification. We investigated and compare the frequency of chronic headache disorders in between two groups. We also aimed to investigate the types of the headaches in demented people and to search the difference from the general population. RESULTS: We could not find any difference statistically between the patient and control groups for the frequency of chronic headache disorder (p=0.568) and between headache subtypes and MMSE (p=0.669). We also examine the relationship between dementia type and subtypes of chronic headache in patient group and we could not find any relationship between this (p=0.070). DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: In our small population retrospective study, we could not detect increased chronic headache history in demented people other than non-demented and could not find any relation between chronic headache disorders and dementia.

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