A narrative review on the burden of migraine: when the burden is the impact on people’s life

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Abstract

Background

The burden of headache disorders, and of migraine in particular, is multifaceted and fragmented. The aim of this narrative review is to provide a description the main topics underlying the concepts of burden and impact of migraine disorders.

Main results

MedLine has been searched for publications covering the period 1990–2018 dealing with the terms burden or impact of migraine, including both episodic and chronic migraine. The main results and themes are reported in a descriptive way, and were grouped by similarity of content into overarching categories. A total of 49 papers, published over 25 years (1994–2018), were retained for the qualitative analysis. Six main themes were identified: prevalence of migraine disorders, overall impact of migraine disorders, impact on work or school activities, family impact, interictal burden, and disease costs. Majority of included studies concluded that patients with migraine reported an higher burden or impact in one or more of the six main themes herein identified, compared to non-headache patients or to patients with tension-type headache, with a tendency towards worse outcomes consistently with higher headache frequency.

Conclusions

The results of this narrative review show that the meaning of a sentence like “migraine is a burdensome condition” is not univocal: rather, it may refer to different concepts and meanings. In our opinion, future research should focus on understanding and facing the impact of migraine on work-related activities and on everyday life activities, as these aspects are highly connected to some tangible (i.e. cost) and less tangible (i.e. interictal burden and reduced quality of life) facets of migraine burden. Disease-specific measures have been implemented and should be exploited to enhance our understanding of migraine burden. This approach would allow to better understand the real impact on people’s life of such a burdensome disease.

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Most cited references 59

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Global, regional, and national burden of migraine and tension-type headache, 1990–2016: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016

Lars Jacob Stovner, Emma Nichols, Timothy Steiner … (2019)

Summary Background Through the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors (GBD) studies, headache has emerged as a major global public health concern. We aimed to use data from the GBD 2016 study to provide new estimates for prevalence and years of life lived with disability (YLDs) for migraine and tension-type headache and to present the methods and results in an accessible way for clinicians and researchers of headache disorders. Methods Data were derived from population-based cross-sectional surveys on migraine and tension-type headache. Prevalence for each sex and 5-year age group interval (ie, age 5 years to ≥95 years) at different time points from 1990 and 2016 in all countries and GBD regions were estimated using a Bayesian meta-regression model. Disease burden measured in YLDs was calculated from prevalence and average time spent with headache multiplied by disability weights (a measure of the relative severity of the disabling consequence of a disease). The burden stemming from medication overuse headache, which was included in earlier iterations of GBD as a separate cause, was subsumed as a sequela of either migraine or tension-type headache. Because no deaths were assigned to headaches as the underlying cause, YLDs equate to disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs). We also analysed results on the basis of the Socio-demographic Index (SDI), a compound measure of income per capita, education, and fertility. Findings Almost three billion individuals were estimated to have a migraine or tension-type headache in 2016: 1·89 billion (95% uncertainty interval [UI] 1·71–2·10) with tension-type headache and 1·04 billion (95% UI 1·00–1·09) with migraine. However, because migraine had a much higher disability weight than tension-type headache, migraine caused 45·1 million (95% UI 29·0–62·8) and tension-type headache only 7·2 million (95% UI 4·6–10·5) YLDs globally in 2016. The headaches were most burdensome in women between ages 15 and 49 years, with migraine causing 20·3 million (95% UI 12·9–28·5) and tension-type headache 2·9 million (95% UI 1·8–4·2) YLDs in 2016, which was 11·2% of all YLDs in this age group and sex. Age-standardised DALYs for each headache type showed a small increase as SDI increased. Interpretation Although current estimates are based on limited data, our study shows that headache disorders, and migraine in particular, are important causes of disability worldwide, and deserve greater attention in health policy debates and research resource allocation. Future iterations of this study, based on sources from additional countries and with less methodological heterogeneity, should help to provide stronger evidence of the need for action. Funding Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

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A six-item short-form survey for measuring headache impact: the HIT-6.

M Kosinski, M S Bayliss, J. Bjorner … (2003)

Migraine and other severe headaches can cause suffering and reduce functioning and productivity. Patients are the best source of information about such impact. To develop a new short form (HIT-6) for assessing the impact of headaches that has broad content coverage but is brief as well as reliable and valid enough to use in screening and monitoring patients in clinical research and practice. HIT-6 items were selected from an existing item pool of 54 items and from 35 items suggested by clinicians. Items were selected and modified based on content validity, item response theory (IRT) information functions, item internal consistency, distributions of scores, clinical validity, and linguistic analyses. The HIT-6 was evaluated in an Internet-based survey of headache sufferers (n = 1103) who were members of America Online (AOL). After 14 days, 540 participated in a follow-up survey. HIT-6 covers six content categories represented in widely used surveys of headache impact. Internal consistency, alternate forms, and test-retest reliability estimates of HIT-6 were 0.89, 0.90, and 0.80, respectively. Individual patient score confidence intervals (95%) of app. +/-5 were observed for 88% of all respondents. In tests of validity in discriminating across diagnostic and headache severity groups, relative validity (RV) coefficients of 0.82 and 1.00 were observed for HIT-6, in comparison with the Total Score. Patient-level classifications based in HIT-6 were accurate 88.7% of the time at the recommended cut-off score for a probability of migraine diagnosis. HIT-6 was responsive to self-reported changes in headache impact. The IRT model estimated for a 'pool' of items from widely used measures of headache impact was useful in constructing an efficient, reliable, and valid 'static' short form (HIT-6) for use in screening and monitoring patient outcomes.

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Prevalence and Burden of Migraine in the United States: Data From the American Migraine Study II

Seymour Diamond, Merle Diamond, Michael Reed … (2001)

To describe the prevalence, sociodemographic profile, and the burden of migraine in the United States in 1999 and to compare results with the original American Migraine Study, a 1989 population-based study employing identical methods.

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Author and article information

Contributors

Matilde Leonardi:

ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0552-8923

+39.02.2394.2511 , matilde.leonardi@istituto-besta.it

Alberto Raggi: alberto.raggi@istituto-besta.it

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): J Headache Pain

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): J Headache Pain

Title: The Journal of Headache and Pain

Publisher: Springer Milan (Milan )

ISSN (Print): 1129-2369

ISSN (Electronic): 1129-2377

Publication date (Electronic): 25 April 2019

Publication date PMC-release: 25 April 2019

Publication date Collection: 2019

Volume: 20

Issue: 1

Electronic Location Identifier: 41

Affiliations

ISNI 0000 0001 0707 5492, GRID grid.417894.7, Neurology, Public Health and Disability Unit, , Fondazione IRCSS Istituto Neurologico Carlo Besta, ; Via Celoria 11, 20133 Milan, Italy

Author information

Matilde Leonardi http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0552-8923

Article

Publisher ID: 993

DOI: 10.1186/s10194-019-0993-0

PMC ID: 6734273

PubMed ID: 31023226

SO-VID: 8da3390f-977e-44c8-b8a2-5315e9bbf2de

License:

Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

History

Date received : 22 February 2019

Date accepted : 8 April 2019

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ScienceOpen disciplines: Anesthesiology & Pain management

Keywords: migraine,burden,disability,quality of life,years lived with a disability,disability-adjusted life years,work impact,family impact,interictal,cost

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ScienceOpen disciplines: Anesthesiology & Pain management

Keywords: migraine, burden, disability, quality of life, years lived with a disability, disability-adjusted life years, work impact, family impact, interictal, cost

A narrative review on the burden of migraine: when the burden is the impact on people’s life

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Asian Journal of Quality of Life (AjQoL)

Most cited references 59

Global, regional, and national burden of migraine and tension-type headache, 1990–2016: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016

A six-item short-form survey for measuring headache impact: the HIT-6.

Prevalence and Burden of Migraine in the United States: Data From the American Migraine Study II

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