Study finds migraine sufferers have higher risk of Ménière's disease - and vice versa
clinical
New approaches to managing Ménières disease may be facilitated by the recent work of South Korean researchers who found comorbidity and association between this confounding inner ear condition and migraine.
The authors of the study, published in JAMA – Otolaryngology this April 2022, suggest that novel therapeutic agents could be developed based on the reciprocal association between the two diseases.Their study of the temporal association between migraine and Ménière's (MD) demonstrated bidirectional associations, showing that patients with MD had a higher risk of developing migraine, and patients with migraine had an increased risk of MD.
Case control study of migraine and MD patients
Previous investigations had proposed an association between the two conditions, but the proposal lacked a study of temporal association. The authors ran a case-control study included participants 40 years or older from the Korean National Health Insurance Service Health Screening Cohort from 2002 to 2015.
A total of 6919 patients with MD were matched with 27,676 control participants without MD for age, sex, income, region of residence, and index date. A further 35,889 patients with migraine were matched with 71,778 control participants without migraine.
The analysis covered a total of 142,262 total participants. Migraine occurred in 695 of 6919 patients with MD (10.0%) and 970 of 27,676 matched control participants (3.5%). MD was present in 1098 of 35,889 patients with migraine (3.1%) and 781 of 71,778 matched control participants (1.1%).
"Therapeutics for migraine could potentially be applied to MD and vice versa," the researchers concluded.
Source: JAMA