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Livedo reticularis and migraine: a marker for stroke risk?
Gretchen E Tietjen1, Mohamed M Al-Qasmi, Mohammad S Shukairy
1Department of Neurology, Medical College of Ohio, Toledo, USA.
Background And Purpose:
Livedo reticularis is a dermatopathy characterized by an irregular, violaceous, netlike pattern which spares the face. Associated with a variety of conditions, it occurs consequent to pathological or physiological narrowing of small and medium arteries at the dermis-subcutis border. Sneddon syndrome refers to the idiopathic coupling of livedo reticularis and stroke in the absence of traditional vascular risk factors. Over 50% of persons with Sneddon syndrome describe a history of headache. We undertook this study to determine the frequency of livedo reticularis in our headache clinic.
Methods:
We performed a retrospective chart review of consecutive patients attending a headache clinic over a period of 6 months. The patients had all been seen by one physician (G.E.T.) who noted the presence or absence of livedo reticularis. The charts were reviewed for age, sex, and vascular risk factors, including current use of oral contraceptives, and history of smoking, coronary artery disease, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, stroke, or arthritis.
Results:
Charts from 133 patients with headache were reviewed (24 men [18%], 109 women [82%]; mean age, 42 +/- 13 years). Livedo reticularis was observed in 29 patients (22%) and in a similar proportion in men (25%) and women (21%). When we stratified the migraine population by presence or absence of livedo, we found no significant difference in age (44.5 versus 41.7 years, P =.16). There was a higher frequency of stroke diagnosis in the cohort with livedo reticularis (28%[8 of 29] versus 7%[7 of 104], P =.005), but we found no significant differences in frequency of hypertension, oral contraceptive use, diabetes mellitus, coronary artery disease, arthritis, or cigarette smoking.
Conclusions:
In our headache clinic, livedo reticularis is present in more than one fifth of patients. A history of stroke is more frequent in this subset of migraineurs, raising the possibility that livedo reticularis can be used as a clinical marker to identify those migraineurs with an increased risk of stroke.