title: Headache in school children: is the prevalence increasing?
abstract: The objectives of this systematic review were to examine age dependency of headache prevalence in school age children and to assess secular trends of headache prevalence in the last decade, gender and regional differences. A literature search was performed in MEDLINE to identify all prevalence studies in children and adolescents. Five hundred seventy studies were found, of which 37 studies could be included for this review. Headache prevalence in school children increases with their age as demonstrated in cohorts of identical children and cross-sectional surveys covering different age groups of children in one population. Regarding a potential general increase in the prevalence of headache in children and adolescents in the last decade, there are four studies which all show some increase of headache prevalence; however, the degree of increase is varying. Prevalence of headache in girls appears to be higher than in boys. There were no clear regional differences in the prevalence of headache.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Social Paediatrics and Adolescents Medicine, Division of Epidemiology, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Haydnstr. 5, 80367, Munich, Germany, lucia.albers@med.uni-muenchen.de.
authors.forename: Lucia
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Albers
authors.forename: Rüdiger
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: von Kries
authors.forename: Florian
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Heinen
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Straube
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D017677:Age Distribution; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development / Q000502:physiology; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D051270:Headache Disorders, Primary / Q000453:epidemiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D015995:Prevalence; D017678:Sex Distribution; D013334:Students / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*