How Does Migraine Change After 10 Years? A Clinical Cohort Follow-Up Analysis

To describe the 10-year evolution of a cohort of migraine patients, focusing on prognostic factors of improvement.

Migraine is one of the most prevalent and disabling diseases and migraineurs often want to know about the evolutionary timeline of their condition. Yet, data from longitudinal studies with a long-term follow-up is scarce.

This is a 10-year longitudinal study. In 2008, we recruited 1109 consecutive migraine patients who answered an initial survey. In 2018, we did a follow-up. We compared initial and final (after 10 years) data. A reduction ≥50% in Headache days/month was considered as improvement. A comparative study was carried out to identify predictors of improvement or no improvement.

After 10 years, 380 patients completed the survey (34.3% of the initial cohort), 77.1% (293/380) were women; mean age 41.0 ± 10.6 years and 73.7% (280/380) had an initial diagnosis of episodic migraine (EM). After 10 years, 48.2% (183/380) of patients did not have a medical follow-up of their migraine; 47.4% (180/380) decreased ≥50% in frequency, which increased the proportion of EM (73.7% vs 87.4%) (P < .001) as compared to the initial results. Factors independently associated with improvement were: a baseline frequency >10 days/month (OR[95%]: 3.04 [1.89, 4.89]; P < .001), nonsmoking (2.13 [1.23, 3.67]; P = .006) and a medical follow-up for migraine (2.45 [1.54, 3.90]; P < .001). Additionally, after 10 years, we observed a reduction in the use of preventive treatment (48.7% vs 23.5%) and an increase in monotherapy (42.2% vs 72.7%) (P < .001).

After 10 years, in almost half of the patients who answered the survey, migraine improved. Other than the natural pathophysiology of migraine, having a medical follow-up and healthy habits such as nonsmoking were independent factors associated with improvement.