Prevalence of migraine and its relationship to educational performance in adolescents of Brijand city (2010)

Migraine headaches, start since adolescence, are often severe and lead to dysfunction in patients. This study was performed to determine the prevalence of migraine and its relationship with educational disability in adolescents of Birjand city in 2010.

In this descriptive- analytical study, 723 adolescents were selected by cluster sampling method and have been investigated by headache international criteria for diagnosing common migraine; the degree of educational disability has been determined by the fifth version of Migraine Disability Assessment Questionnaire. Data analysis was performed by SPSS (version 15)using statistical tests of Mann Whitney, Chi square, Fisher and correlation coefficient at the significant level of P<0.05.

The mean age of studied subjects was 15.8±1.02 years and the prevalence of headache was 68.5%. Prevalence of migraine was 6.4% in boys and 7.6% in girls. The mean length of headache attacks was 8.15±4.97 hours, the number of attacks during the last 3 months was 7.1±6.69 and attacks interval was 14.11±8.03 days. The average score of migraine derived disability was 11.59±13.71 (average disability) and headache score was 4.93±2.77 (average headache). The educational disability was significantly associated with intensity, frequency and interval of headache attacks (P<0.001).

Regarding to the high prevalence of headache and various complications, it is recommended to identify the affected students and introduce them to the specialized centers for identifying the precipitating factors, instructing the families and teachers and preventive measures to reduce the attacks and improving the efficacy of people.