Headache disorders, and migraine in particular, are important causes of disability worldwide, and deserve greater attention in health policy debates and research resource allocation. This according to a recent investigation that used data from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors (GBD) 2016 study to provide new estimates for prevalence and years of life lived with disability (YLDs) for migraine and tension-type headache. Prevalence for gender and 5-year age group interval at different time points from 1990 and 2016 in all countries and GBD regions were estimated using a Bayesian meta-regression model. Researchers found:
- Almost 3 billion individuals were estimated to have a migraine or tension-type headache in 2016: 1.89 billion with tension-type headache and 1.04 billion with migraine.
- However, because migraine had a much higher disability weight than tension-type headache, migraine caused 45.1 million and tension-type headache only 7.2 million YLDs globally in 2016.
- The headaches were most burdensome in women between ages 15 and 49 years, with migraine causing 20.3 million and tension-type headache 2.9 million YLDs in 2016, which was 11.2% of all YLDs in this age group and sex.
Stovner LJ, Nichols E, Steiner TJ, et al. GBD 2016 Headache Collaborators. Global, regional, and national burden of migraine and tension-type headache, 1990-2016: A systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016. Lancet Neurol . 2018;17(11):954-976. doi:10.1016/S1474-4422(18)30322-3.