Chronic headaches improve with time among kids: Study
POSTED July 17, 2009 - 10:54 | POSTED BY Nisha Bhatia
Last edited by Priya Markanda on July 17, 2009 - 14:17
Study author Dr. Shuu-Jiun Wang, of the Taipei Veterans General Hospital and National Yang-Ming University School of Medicine in Taipei, Taiwan, said the study results implied children who had problem of chronic headaches had chances to get better as they grew up.
It was good news both for the children and their parents, who underwent equal frustration and considerable disability as their children did, he remarked.
He further added that as time passed most kids improved and experienced “less frequent migraine headaches as young adults.”
Study details
The study involved 122 middle school kids, between the ages of 12 and 14 years, who suffered from chronic daily headache. The study participants were observed over a long period of time, for about eight years.
After one year it was found that 60 percent of the children had stopped suffering from chronic daily headache while 75 percent outgrew the disabling condition after two years.
In fact, after eight years as less as only 12 percent out of the total study participants (103 children) suffered from daily migraine attacks.
According to the findings of the study, 11 percent children were totally healthy at the end of the study while 75 percent experienced only episodic migraine or probable migraine.
Implications of the study
In a news release Wang said, "Parents and children should be prepared for the possibility that while chronic daily headache may get better over time, headaches in general may never fully go away, but for most children the headaches are much less frequent when they become young adults."
In an editorial Dr. Kenneth Mack, a practicing neurologist at the Mayo Clinic Pediatric Center in Rochester, Minn., stated, "I think most people will get better over time ... a lot of these patients will change from having daily headaches and grow up to be people who have occasional migraine headaches."
The findings of the study were published in an online issue of the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology called Neurology.
