CHARLOTTE, N.C. – according to data presented at the 48th national meeting of the Child Neurology Society. Furthermore, patients with joint hypermobility have a high rate of headache disability, while patients without joint hypermobility have less headache disability, according to Dhwani Sahjwani, MD, a resident at Inova Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church, Va., and colleagues.
While conducting research in the headache clinic at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., Dr. Sahjwani saw several children with joint hypermobility and a diagnosis of a disorder such as Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. She and her colleagues began analyzing patients to evaluate the potential association between joint hypermobility and headache disability in children. The investigators included pediatric patients examined in the headache clinic at Children’s National Medical Center between October 2018 and January 2019 in their study. All headache clinic patients were enrolled in a patient registry that had been approved by an independent review board.
Dr. Sahjwani and colleagues measured patients’ headache disability with the Headache Impact Test–6 (HIT-6) questionnaire. Scores of 60 or greater on this questionnaire indicate severe headache disability. The researchers assessed joint hypermobility using the Beighton scoring system. In this system, scores greater than 4 indicate joint hypermobility.
Dr. Sahjwani’s group scored 76 patients using the Beighton system and HIT-6 questionnaire. Participants’ median age was 13.7 years. Approximately 26% of patients had Beighton scores that indicated joint hypermobility. About 65% of the patients with joint hypermobility had a diagnosis of migraine without aura. In addition, 80% of patients with joint hypermobility had severe headache disability, according to the HIT-6 disability criteria. The average pain intensity in patients with hypermobile joints was 6.1 out of 10. Among participants without significant joint hypermobility, 90% had mild headache disability.
Patients with joint hypermobility and increased tissue elasticity “tend to have a lower threshold for pain, in general, in all parts of their bodies,” said Dr. Sahjwani. Greater headache severity might be expected in this population, “because they have more pain if they have hypermobile joints or tissue.”
Headache treatments for this population are based solely on the type of headache that each patient has. Patients with joint hypermobility and migraine, for example, are candidates for rescue medication and long-term prophylactic medications. “I don’t think the joint hypermobility is going to change how you manage their headaches,” said Dr. Sahjwani.
The study results suggest that, when children present with severely debilitating headaches, a neurologist should consider examining them for joint hypermobility “to see if they have another diagnosis, such as Ehlers-Danlos syndrome ... that has to be managed in addition to their headaches,” Dr. Sahjwani concluded.
The study was not supported by funding. The authors did not report any disclosures.
SOURCE: Sahjwani D et al. CNS 2019, Abstract 101.