Impact of Headache Frequency and Sleep on Migraine Patients During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Background: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has spread worldwide and poses a great threat to global health. COVID-19 has also an unneglected effect on migraine patients. Migraine attack frequency is one of the migraine characteristics, and its impact during COVID-19 needs further research. We aimed to evaluate whether migraine attack frequency during the COVID-19 pandemic differed from pre-COVID-19 attack frequency and explore possible influencing factors during the pandemic.

Methods: This prospective cohort study enrolled 187 migraine patients from the Department of Neurology of West China Hospital from October 2019 to December 2019. After the inclusion and exclusion criteria, a total of 157 patients were included. We collected demographic data, clinical characteristics, and epidemiological contact information and followed up on March 2020. Then, paired-samples T-tests, logistic regression and interaction tests were used to analyze the data.

Results: We found that the migraine attack frequency was 2.47 ± 1.12 before and 3.54 ± 1.79 during COVID-19 (P<0.0001). Then, we divided patients into two groups based on the difference in migraine attack frequency between the COVID-19 and pre-COVID-19 periods and employed logistic regression analysis. In the logistic regression analysis, divorced status (OR = 6.53, P = 0.0453), good sleep pre-COVID-19 and poor sleep during COVID-19 (OR = 3.11, P = 0.0432) had independent effects on migraine attack frequency during the COVID-19 pandemic. We found no interaction in poor sleep during COVID-19 between various subgroups.

Conclusion: We found that migraineurs' headache attacks were more frequent during COVID-19 than pre-COVID-19 and that increased migraine attack frequency was independently related to divorced status and poor sleep during COVID-19.

Keywords: COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; headache; migraine frequency; pandemic.; sleep.