London, Jan 6 (Inditop.com) Childhood maltreatment, especially emotional abuse and neglect, is linked with migraine, says a new study.
Migraine patients reporting such abuse or neglect had a significantly higher number of complex pain conditions, compared with those who had no such history, the study said.
A report of the US Department of Health and Human Services said state and local child protective services (CPS) investigated 3.2 million reports of child abuse or neglect in 2007.
CPS classified 794,000 of these children as victims with 59 percent categorised as child neglect; four percent were emotional abuse; eight percent as sexual abuse; and 11 percent were physical abuse cases.
Both population- and clinic-based studies, including the current study, have demonstrated a link between childhood maltreatment and an increased risk of migraine years later.
Gretchen E. Tietjen from the University of Toledo Medical Centre and colleagues recruited a cross-sectional survey of headache clinic patients with physician-diagnosed migraine at 11 outpatient headache centres.
Childhood maltreatment was assessed using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ), a 28-item self-reported quantitative measure of childhood abuse (physical, sexual, and emotional) and neglect (physical and emotional).
Self-reported physician-diagnosed history of comorbid pain conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), fibromyalgia (FM), interstitial cystitis (IC), and arthritis was recorded on the survey.
A total of 1,348 patients diagnosed with migraine completed the surveys. Researchers found migraine victims who reported childhood emotional abuse or physical neglect had a significantly higher incidence of comorbid pain conditions compared with those without a history of maltreatment.
In the study population, 61 percent had at least one comorbid pain condition and 58 percent reported experiencing childhood trauma either by abuse or neglect, said a Toledo release.
These findings appear in the January issue of Headache: The Journal of Head and Face Pain.
