Association of Gastrointestinal Functional Disorders and Migraine Headache: a Population Base Study

BACKGROUND Migraine is one of the prevalent headaches. Many of patients with migraine, complain of gastrointestinal symptoms. There is limited studies on relation of gastrointestinal symptoms and migraine headache at population level. METHODS In this population-based study, 1038 subjects older than 15 year from a rural area in Fars province, south of Iran. were investigated for functional gastrointestinal disorders. By cluster random sampling, 160 of these persons invited to receive endoscopy along with histopathology samples of upper gastrointestinal tract. Data were analyzed using Pearson chi-square and Fisher exact. RESULTS Mean age of participations were 34.3 years with female to male of 3:1. The prevalence of migraine, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), reflux, and dyspepsia were 24.6%, 17.7%, 17.4%, and 32.1%, respectively. There were significant relationship between migraine and functional gastrointestinal diseases (odds ratio of association for migraine with IBS, reflux, and dyspepsia were 3.43, 1.68, and 1.68 with p-value < 0.001 for all). In endoscopic findings, only presence of hiatal hernia was associated significantly with migraine (p = 0.011). No histopathologic findings in antral or duodenal biopsies were associated with migraine. CONCLUSION In this population based study we found significant association between migraines and gastrointestinal functional disorders including IBS, reflux and dyspepsia. This may have implication in better management of patients with migraine headache.