Prevalence of Migraine in the Elderly: A Narrated Review

Abstract

Migraine is one of the most prevalent neurological disorders among all age groups including the elderly, but the incidence and prevalence of migraine tend to decrease with age. The clinical phenotype of migraine also appears to be different in the elderly patient group in comparison to the younger patient group, with elderly migraine appearing to be more often bilateral and associated with what has become known as “late-life migraine accompaniments. Furthermore, difficulty in the differentiation of migraine from vascular insults such as transient ischemic attacks and amyloid angiopathy and other multiple comorbidities, polypharmacy and age-related changes in pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics makes treatments for this cohort challenging but necessary, especially given the worldwide increase in life expectancy, and likelihood of migraine continuing to be a major personal and public health problem.

Prevalence and risk factors of migraine and non-migraine headache in older people – results of the Heinz Nixdorf Recall study

“…The clinical features of migraine change in older age. Headache is less intense, and aura symptoms frequently become more prominent and sometimes even the only or the most bothersome feature of migraine (12). Depending on age, about 7-23% of migraine sufferers have migraine with aura (7).…”

Effect of age on pharmacokinetics, efficacy, and safety of galcanezumab treatment in adult patients with migraine: results from six phase 2 and phase 3 randomized clinical trials

“…Several reports have shown that the clinical characteristics of migraine, such as attack severity and disease profile, can be different in older patients [10,15,16]. As a person with migraine ages, their brain can be metabolically and physically altered due to their disease [22][23][24].…”

“…While migraine can be experienced by people of all ages [7,10], the studies analyzed here enrolled patients with a maximum age of 65 years. However, the safety of galcanezumab in an older population was also addressed in a previous study of galcanezumab in patients with osteoarthritis.…”

“…While migraine is most prevalent in people aged 25 to 55 years [6], many people over the age of 55 years also experience migraine attacks [7][8][9], with the one-year prevalence of migraine among older adults being reported as approximately 10% [10]. However, diagnosis of migraine typically occurs before the age of 50 years and the prevalence of migraine tends to decrease with age [10,11].…”

Knowledge Mapping of Migraine: a Bibliometric Analysis (2000-2019)

“…The prevalence of migraine in children increases with age [5]. And the annual prevalence of migraine in the elderly is about 10% [6]. Migraine is the main cause of disability in the world, the number of years of disability-adjusted life lost caused by migraine has reached one third [7].…”