CVD Risk Increased With Vasomotor Symptoms, History of Migraine

FRIDAY, Feb. 16, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- Women with persistent vasomotor symptoms (VMS) and a history of migraine have an increased risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD), although the risk is attenuated with adjustment for CVD risk factors, according to a study published online Feb. 13 in Menopause.

Catherine Kim, M.D., M.P.H., from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and colleagues conducted a secondary data analysis of 1,954 women in the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults study to examine whether VMS and migraine headaches are associated with the risk for CVD events and stroke.

The researchers identified 81 incident CVD events, including 42 strokes among 835 women with minimal VMS, 521 with increasing VMS, and 598 with persistent VMS. After adjustment for age, race, estrogen use, oophorectomy, and hysterectomy, women with histories of migraine and persistent VMS had a greater risk for CVD than those without migraine histories and with minimal/increasing VMS; these associations were attenuated and no longer significant after adjustment for CVD risk factors. Similarly, women with histories of migraine and persistent VMS had an increased stroke risk, which was also attenuated and no longer significant after adjustment for CVD risk factors.

"Our results should also be reassuring to women with either migraine history or persistent VMS over time, whose risk for CVD events in late middle-life does not appear to be significantly elevated," the authors write.

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