Incremental absenteeism due to headaches in migraine: results from the Mig-Access French national cohort

Objective: To assess the costs of headache-related absenteeism of community -dwelling migraineurs, and to compare the amount of absenteeism between mig raineurs aged 18 and older and age, sex, and occupation-matched nonheadache -prone subjects. Design: Follow-up over a 3-month period. Samples: 385 migr aineurs and 313 nonheadache subjects representative of the setting. Methods : Every day, the participants recorded the presence of headache, if any, an d the work situation (unemployment, holiday, weekend, medical reason, nonme dical reason). Sickness-related absenteeism was the number of workdays miss ed or interrupted for medical reasons. Headache-related absenteeism was the sickness-related absenteeism during workdays with headaches. The annual he adache-related absenteeism costs in France were extrapolated from these dat a in accordance with the mean income per occupational category. The increme ntal absenteeism and related costs were the difference between the two samp les. Results: Of working migraineurs, 20% had at least one period of absent eeism. During the 3 months, they missed or interrupted on average 1.4 days for medical reasons, 0.25 of which for headaches. Sickness-related absentee ism was statistically higher in migraineurs than in nonheadache-prone subje cts. This difference was due to a higher absenteeism for comorbidity reason s, not for headache reasons, representing 20% of all sickness-related absen teeism. Migraineurs avoided sick leave for headache reasons. As an incremen tal total, 1.68 days or approximately 0.7% of the annual number of working days are lost on average per individual with migraine. The annual increment al headache-related absenteeism cost was 5.22 billions, i.e. 1,551 rr (US$2 40) per migraineur.