Headache and Epilepsy: Two Autonomous Entities?

Abstract

The relationship between headache and epilepsy remains unresolved. We studied 3,600 patients affected by primary headache and 36 epileptic patients with a present or past history of headache. In the first group, no family history of epilepsy nor epileptiform EEG patterns were found. In the second group, there was no chronological relationship between epileptic seizure and headache attack in more than half of the patients; when found (46.1%) the relationship was neither precise nor specific. Taken as a whole, these data suggest the autonomous nature of epilepsy and headache.