Findings from a study in Iceland suggests that migraine headaches in middle age may give rise to permanent brain damage later in life.
This association is only apparent in women and only for migraines with aura, a common type in which sensations, such as the perception of flickering lights, occur in addition to the headache itself.
The prospective Reykjavik Study, established in 1967, included a random sample of subjects born between 1907 and 1935. In 2002, the study was continued as the AGES-Reykjavik Study to examine factors associated with disease and disability in old age.
Included were 2,693 women and 1,996 men who averaged 51 years of age at the midlife interview and 76 years of age at the late-life evaluation. During the first evaluation, 10.3 per cent of women and 4.2 per cent of men reported a history of migraine with aura.

Depression, mental decline tied
Symptoms of depression increase older people’s likelihood of becoming cognitively impaired, and this risk is especially high for men, a new study in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society shows.
The findings support the theory that depression might result from the effects of blood vessel disease on the brain, and represent the early stages of declining mental function, Dr. Tze Pin Ng of the National University of Singapore and colleagues point out.

The researchers followed 1,497 Chinese men and women who were 55 years of age or older, all of whom had strong mental functioning. At the study’s outset, 10.6 per cent were depressed. Within two years, 44 people, or three per cent, had developed cognitive impairment. All of these individuals had high blood pressure or risk factors for vascular disease such as diabetes or stroke.
While 2.6 per cent of people who weren’t depressed developed cognitive impairment, 5.7 per cent of those who were depressed did. After the researchers accounted for factors that could influence both depression and cognitive function, including gender, education, baseline mental function, and blood vessel disease risk factors, they found that depressed people were 2.29 times more likely to have lost cognitive function than people who weren’t depressed.
The increased risk was only statistically significant among men, who were 4.74 times more likely to become cognitively impaired if they were depressed.
— Reuters