hyperlipidemia in migraine: is it more frequent in migraineurs?

background: some coincidental disorders with migraine have been introduced that may have role in its pathogenesis or aggravation. in this study we determined the relative frequency of hyperlipidemia as a coincidental disorder in patients affected by migraine. methods: a total of 102 migraine-affected patients according to international headache society (his) criteria and 103 control subjects adjusted for age participated in this case-control study. their serum level of triglyceride, total cholesterol, low density lipoprotein cholesterol (ldl-c) and high density lipoprotein cholesterol (hdl-c) were measured. results: a total of 84 women and 18 men with mean age of 34.9 ± 11.8 years and 79 women and 24 men with mean age of 32.8 ± 5.7 years constituted case and control groups, respectively. the means of serum triglyceride, total cholesterol, hdl-c and ldl-c levels in case and control groups were 177.0 ± 118.2 versus 108.7 ± 37.2 mg/dl (p = 0.0001), 186.2 ± 44.1 versus 152.9 ± 3.7 mg/dl (p = 0.0001), 49.9 ± 12.5 versus 46.1 ± 10.7 mg/dl (p = 0.023) and 104.8 ± 33.7 versus 84.1 ± 34.0 mg/dl (p = 0.0001), respectively. the prevalence of hypertriglyceridemia and hypercholesterolemia in case and control groups were 41.2% versus 18.4% (p = 0.0001), and 36.3% versus 9.7% (p = 0.0001). according to multivariate analysis, odds ratios were 3.11 (95% ci: 1.4 -6.6) and 17.4 (95% ci: 2.12-138.3), respectively. odds ratio for low hdl-c was 0.2 (95% ci: 0.08-0.49). conclusion: hypertriglyceridemia and hypercholesterolemia were more frequent in migraineurs. conversely, low hdl-c was less frequent among the patients compared with non-migraineurs.