Associations between depression/anxiety and headache frequency in migraineurs: A cross-sectional study

Anxiety and depression are the most common comorbidities in patients with migraines. Association of these comorbidities depends on the frequency of a headache. In the present study author revealed that higher migraine frequency correlated with higher symptom scores of anxiety and depression.

While migraines have been correlated with emotional distress, it remains unexplained whether the intensity of emotional expression shows direct association with migraine frequency. This analysis examined anxiety/depression in migraineurs.

A total of 588 clinical outpatients were involved in the analysis. Migraines were stratified by attack rate, with well-controlled confounding variables, and with and without auras. Clinical and demographic data comprising sleep symptoms were collected. Multivariable linear regressions were applied to investigate whether migraine rate was correlated with depression/anxiety symptoms, as shown by the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Subscales (HADS) and Beck's Depression Inventory (BDI).  

Patients with chronic migraines showed the highest BDI total scores followed by those with high frequency, medium frequency, low frequency, and lowest in nonmigraine controls, with an important trend in incidence; comparable outcomes were achieved for HADS scores. HADS and BDI scores were individually associated with high-frequency chronic and episodic migraine frequency and to poor sleep quality. The association between migraine frequency and BDI score was present in both aura-present and aura-absent subgroups.

Migraineurs with higher migraine frequency, either with or without auras, showed higher symptom scores of depression and anxiety.