Migraine prevalence, clinical characteristics, and health care-seeking practice in a sample of medical students in Egypt

Abstract

Abstract Introduction Migraine is a common disabling primary headache disorder with significant personal and socio-economic impacts. Medical students usually have multiple triggers for migraine, particularly stress and irregular sleep. Objective To assess the prevalence, characteristics, and degree of disability of migraine in a sample of Egyptian medical students and to study their health care-seeking practice when having migraine Patients and methods A descriptive cross-sectional, questionnaire-based study included 631 undergraduate medical students enrolled in the Faculty of Medicine. Participants’ sociodemographic data, migraine prevalence, characteristic, migraine disability, and health care-seeking practice were evaluated. By using the MIDAS test in the questionnaire, we assessed the impact of migraine headache on the daily activities of the students. The severity of headache was assessed using the visual analog scale (VAS) scores. Results Prevalence of migraine in medical students was found to be 17.9% causing moderate disability. Migraine was significantly more prevalent and caused more disability among female students compared to males (p value 0.001 and 0.001). Only 35.4% of the migraineurs had already seen doctors for their migraine, and self-prescription of medications for migraine was practiced by 58.4%. Statistically significant positive correlation was found between migraine frequency, migraine severity, and low academic performance (p value 0.001 and 0.003 respectively). Conclusion Migraine is highly prevalent among medical students with predominant female prevalence and has a negative impact on their academic performance and other activities.