High incidence of endogenous depression in migraine: Confirmation by tyramine test

Abstract

Forty patients with migraine who were attending a specialist clinic were interviewed with the Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia - Lifetime version. Sixteen (40%) had a history of major depression which was of endogenous type in 15, according to Research Diagnostic Criteria. The tyramine test, a previously established trait marker for endogenous depression, showed that the migraine group as a whole had significantly low values compared with 14 normal controls, due almost entirely to low values in the endogenous depressive subgroup; there were no differences between diet-sensitive and non-diet-sensitive migraine patients. Thus depression in patients with migraine seems unlikely to be secondary to migraine per se. A substantial subgroup of patients with migraine may possess an inherent predisposition to endogenous depression.