Migraine in Nigerian children--a study of 51 patients

This study was undertaken to determine the profile of migraine in Nigerian children, as earlier reports on migraine from Africa dealt mostly with the adult population. Migraine constituted 5.7% of all new referrals seen in the Child Neurology Clinic over a 44 month period. The overall profile is not different from that reported for other racial groups. Haemoglobin AS was found to be more frequent among children with migraine than in the general population, although this difference did not attain statistical significance. Childhood migraine is probably commoner than this study indicates. This may be partly due to the fact that practitioners in the less developed countries have to deal with the more pressing problems of malnutrition, infections, chronic motor handicaps, mental retardation and epilepsy.