title: The course of migraine-a diary study in unselected patients.
abstract: The course of disease and the predictive value of depression and anxiety in patients with migraine were prospectively examined. We recruited 393 migraineurs through articles in newspapers and performed a follow-up examination 30 months later. At baseline and follow-up, patients underwent a semistructured interview, filled out the Headache Impact Test (HIT-6), Self-rating Depression Scale (SDS) and Self-rating Anxiety Scale (SAS) and they kept a headache diary for 30 days. One hundred and fifty-one patients (38.6%) were seen at follow-up. The baseline data of patients with and without follow-up were comparable. At follow-up the number of headache days per month had decreased from 9.6 +/- 5.8 to 8.1 +/- 6.3 (P < 0.001) and the proportion of patients with chronic headache (15.4%) and medication overuse (13%) had remained stable. SDS and SAS scores were associated with a high migraine frequency and high initial SDS scores predicted high migraine frequency at follow-up. This longitudinal study in unselected patients with migraine not excluding subjects with chronic headache, medication overuse, depression or anxiety does not point towards migraine as a progressive disease in the vast majority of patients and confirms the importance of psychiatric comorbidity.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, Medical University of Vienna, Währinger Gürtel 18-20, Vienna 1090, Austria. christian.woeber@meduniwien.ac.at
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Lieba-Samal
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Bartl
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Salhofer
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Prajsnar
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Massl
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Freydl
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Fathinia
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Wöber-Bingöl
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Wöber
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001317:Austria / Q000453:epidemiology; D018450:Disease Progression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D015994:Incidence; D008297:Male; D008499:Medical Records / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D008881:Migraine Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology*; D010147:Pain Measurement / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D018570:Risk Assessment / Q000379:methods; D012307:Risk Factors