Migraines May Be Associated With a Lower Risk of Breast Cancer

Migraine Disease History Appeared to Reduce the Risk of the Most Common Sub-Types of Breast Cancer

Washington, DC Saturday February 14th, 2009--(Revised February 28th, 2009)--In beginning of Winter an issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention reported that first-of-its-kind study which suggests a history of Migraines is associated with a significantly lower risk of breast cancer. With all the suffering and burden such as elevated risk of stroke and heart attack in woman which Migraine disease stack the deck on the fairer sex.

On this Valentine Day, a romance day more intended for the enjoyment of woman would it be a nice 'Valentine' for you women out there to know that "We found that, overall, women who had a history of Migraines had a 30 percent lower risk of breast cancer compared to women who did not have a history of such headaches," said Christopher I. Li, M.D., Ph.D, a breast-cancer epidemiologist and associate member of the Hutchinson Center's Public Health Sciences Division.

What caught our eyes at MAGNUM was the large number of articles generated by this study.  Almost a hundred at last count.  Most reporting on the study as a possible positive without questioning the study or methodology of the study to get to such a large change risk factor.

According to the Hutchinson Center's Public Health Sciences Division study In particular, Migraine history appeared to reduce the risk of the most common subtypes of breast cancer: those that are estrogen-receptor and/or progesterone-receptor positive. Such tumors have estrogen and/or progesterone receptors, or docking sites, on the surface of their cells, which makes them more responsive to hormone-blocking drugs than tumors that lack such receptors.

The biological mechanism behind the association between Migraines and breast cancer is not fully known, but Li and colleagues suspect that it has to do with fluctuations in levels of circulating hormones.

MAGNUM would agree that there seams to be some merit in the relationship with fluctuations in levels of circulating hormones, which are a known trigger for Migraines.  With the so-called 'Menstrual Migraines' not being a type of Migraine but rather an aggressive and well known predictable Migraine trigger, whereby applying this knowledge a female Migrainuer could plan to better abort and prevent her Migraines taking this understanding to heart.

However those running the study go one to note "Migraines seem to have a hormonal component in that they occur more frequently in women than in men, and some of their known triggers are associated with hormones," Li said. "For example, women who take oral contraceptives - three weeks of active pills and one week of inactive pills to trigger menstruation - tend to suffer more migraines during their hormone-free week," he said. Conversely, pregnancy - a high-estrogen state - is associated with a significant decrease in Migraines. "By the third trimester of pregnancy, 80 percent of migraine sufferers do not have these episodes," he said. Estrogen is known to stimulate the growth of hormonally sensitive breast cancer.