Headache and cardiovascular risk factors: Positive association with hypertension

The study analyzes the prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors in 1343 pa tients with severe headache (399 men and 944 women), aged 15 to 64 years; a nalyses were controlled for sex, age, and type and frequency of headache. P revalence of various forms of headache was different between men and women. Age and days per year with headache were significantly different among var ious forms of headache. For men and women with headache, age directly relat ed to prevalence of hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, and obesity. Due to low prevalence, analyses by age were not done for diabetes mellitus. For c igarette smoking, prevalence was not related to age in men, but was inverse ly related to age in women. With control for age, prevalence of cardiovascu lar risk factors was not significantly different among patients with differ ent forms of headache, except for cluster headache. Among men with cluster headache, prevalence was high for cigarette smoking, but low for hyperchole sterolemia. With control for age, days per year with headache did not relat e to prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors except for cigarette smoking in men. Compared to data for a population sample used as control, patients with headache had higher prevalence of hypertension in both sexes, indepen dent of age (odds ratio 1.51, 95% confidence interval 1.28 to 1.80); the di fference between patients with headache and the control population was lowe r with increasing age. The high prevalence of hypertension among patients w ith headache was not due to overweight. The data indicate that headache is significantly associated with hypertension, but not with other cardiovascul ar risk factors.