Chronic daily headache, medication overuse, and obesity in children and adolescents

Abstract

Obesity and headaches are common in children and adults. Adult studies suggest obesity is a risk factor for chronic daily headache and increased migraine frequency and severity. Pediatric studies have suggested a relationship between obesity, increasing headache frequency, and disability. The authors retrospectively evaluated 925 children from their Pediatric Headache Clinic between July 2004 and July 2008, assessing headache frequency, medication overuse, and body mass index compared to population-based norms. The pediatric headache group as a whole had a greater percentage of overweight than the general population. This was also true with the subgroup of patients with chronic tension-type headache, although the numbers were small. Data did not show increased incidence of overweight in children with medication overuse or chronic migraine. This contrasts with adult data, which have suggested a closer link between chronic migraine and obesity and have not supported a link with chronic tension-type headache. © 2012 The Author(s).