Prevalence of epilepsy in migraine patients and their first-degree relatives

Migraine and epilepsy are among the most common neurological diseases, share several characteristics, including specific clinical features, overlapping pathophysiological mechanisms, and treatment. It seems these two conditions have bidirectional relation and the presence of one disorder increases the probability of other. Current study was performed as a descriptive cross-sectional survey to evaluate the prevalence of epilepsy in migraine patients attending to Shariati Hospital of Tehran during 2010 and their first-degree relatives. Four-hundred patients with migraine were evaluated. Mean age of patients was 31.13±8.99 years. One-hundred subjects (25%) were male and 300 patients (75%) were female. Nine patients (2.3%) had personal history of epilepsy and 7 patients (1.8%) had familial history of epilepsy. Patients with self-history of epilepsy had significantly higher rate of aura (66.7% versus 20.2%, P=0.004). According to the obtained results, it may be concluded that the obtained frequency for epilepsy in migraine is low and also it is relatively similar to other reports.