Study Explores Characteristics of Vestibular Migraine

TUESDAY, April 5, 2022 (HealthDay News) -- For patients with vestibular migraine (VM), the mean age of headache and vertigo onset is 25 and 39 years, respectively, according to a study published in the April issue of Clinical Neurology and Neurosurgery.

Neşe Çelebisoy, M.D., Ph.D., from Ege University in Izmir, Turkey, and colleagues examined demographic and clinical features of VM in 415 patients using structured questionnaires and clinical examination.

The researchers found that the mean age was 25 and 39 years for headache and vertigo onset, respectively. Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo was detected during the interictal period in 12.3 percent of participants. On audiometry, 10 percent had hearing loss; in 8.7 percent, it was one-sided low-frequency sensory-neural hearing loss <2,000 Hz, and the history was typical for Meniere disease (MD) as well as VM. Of the patients with MD and VM, 94.4 percent had tinnitus, 83.4 percent had aural fullness, 72.2 percent had nausea, and 30.5 percent had vomiting. On a visual analog scale measured from 0 to 10, median attack severity was 8 and 7 for headache and vertigo, respectively, for the entire group. Severe headache correlated with age 43 years and younger, while severe vertigo correlated with age 41 years and older (odds ratios, 6.831 and 7.073, respectively). Patients with family history of migraine (72.5 percent) had a lower age of onset of both migraine headaches and vertigo.

"The clinical presentation in VM shows great variability," the authors write. "The mean age at headache onset was 28 ± 9 years and the period between onset of migraine headaches and vertigo attacks was around 10 years."

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