Fatigue, Mood Changes May Predict Onset of Pediatric Migraine
BOSTON — Symptoms that regularly occur in the hours or days before a migraine have been useful in past research for signalling the onset of the condition in adult patients. A new study suggests that they may also be predictive for pediatric migraine.
The prospective analysis of more than 200 patients aged 5 to 18 years showed that 39% had premonitory symptoms, with the most common being fatigue and mood change.
These symptoms were more common in patients with migraine with vs without aura and in patients 12 years of age or younger. In addition, 45% of the girls vs 34% of the boys had a history of these signs.
“For families with kids who are in that subset who have premonitory signs, if they know to look for them, it’s sort of an early warning signal,” principal investigator, Howard Jacobs, MD, pediatrician and headache specialist at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Columbus, Ohio, told Medscape Medical News.
“As clinicians, if we’re aware that these exist, we should be telling parents to watch out for them and that, ‘Hey, your child is about to get a headache.’ So this is educational for us, too,” he said.
Dr Jacobs presented the findings here at the American Headache Society Annual Scientific Meeting (AHS) 2017.