If you have a history of migraines and other headaches, you may be more likely to have retina damage than people who don’t have a history of migraines and headaches.
A new study from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is linking retinopathy (retinal damage) with migraines. Retinopathy can lead to severe vision impairment and even blindness. Worse, both retinal disease and migraines have been linked with stroke.
Migraine headaches affect approximately seventeen percent of women and six percent of men in the United States. Scientists aren’t exactly sure what causes migraines, though they suspect that both blood vessels and nerves are involved.
The University of North Carolina study looked at headache history and eye health for more than ten thousand men and women between the ages of fifty-one and seventy-one. People with headaches (approximately twenty-two percent of the participants) were about 1.4 times more likely to have retinopathy than people without headaches. People with migraines or other headaches with visual auras were also about 1.4 times more likely to have retinopathy than people without headaches.
The study also looked at people who did not have a history of diabetes or high blood pressure — those are two types of people who are more likely to have retinopathy in general. In people without diabetes or high blood pressure, the relationship between migraines and retinopathy was even stronger.
The study authors don’t want to say that migraine causes vascular disease or retinal disease. They do, however, believe that the two are somehow related — perhaps sharing an underlying physiological issue. They want physicians and patients both to pay attention to the possible relationship between migraines and headache and risk factors for heart disease and stroke.
A spokesman from the Montefiore Headache Center in New York City said that the University of North Carolina study supports the idea that both neurological AND vascular factors may contribute to migraine headaches. Recent studies have demonstrated a connection between migraines with a visual aura and an increased risk of heart disease and stroke. Put those studies with the Chapel Hill study and you have more evidence that migraines may be associated with diseases of the blood vessels.