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[Tobacco brand-related headache]
J M Olivé1, J González-Menacho
1Sección de Neurología. Servicio de Medicina Interna. Hospital Universitari Sant Joan de Reus. Facultat de Medicina i de Ciències de la Salut. Universitat Rovira i Virgili. Tarragona. España.
Introduction:
Tobacco smoking has been considered a risk factor for headache by some authors, while others disagree because of contradictory data.
Patients And Results:
We describe the clinical aspects of eleven patients (four men and seven women) who presented to us with tobacco brand-related headaches. Clinical history help us to discover that headache of each patient was directly related with certain cigarette brands smoking. The cigarette brands implicated were diverse and different for each patient. Headaches were migraine-like in seven cases, cluster-like in three, and non-specific in the other one. They disappeared after switching brand or stopping smoking.
Conclusions:
In our patients, headaches were clearly related to smoking certain brands of cigarettes, which has never been reported before. This type of headache has characteristics that suggest that it could be a particular form of chemical odour intolerance, previously described. The number of possible responsible substances is large. More studies will be necessary in order to discover the mechanism leading patients to tobacco brand-related headache. It is important to ask our patients which cigarette brand they smoke, so it is possible to solve the problem.