Abstract
BackgroundChronic migraine is a disabling condition that impacts multiple aspects of migraineurs’ lives. Although pharmacological treatments can help to treat the pain associated with migraine headache, chronic migraineurs often experience side-effects of pharmacological treatments. Those experiences may contribute to the observed growth in complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) use among migraineurs. Relatively little is known about the patterns of CAM treatment and the characteristics of chronic migraineurs. Therefore, the purpose of the present study is to investigate the characteristics of chronic migraineurs who use CAM treatment and the relationship among satisfaction with current CAM use, negative life impact, migraine outcomes, and psychiatric comorbidities among chronic migraineurs.Methods2907 participants were recruited from a well-known online migraine headache resource. All participants were US adults aged 18 years or older. Migraineurs are referred to this website through various routes (e.g., referral from healthcare providers, internet search, obtaining information from research papers, personal invitation from other users, and information shared on social media etc.). Participants completed a 30-min self-report-survey in the spring of 2014.ResultsAlmost half of the participants reported that they are currently using more than three different CAM treatments even though the majority of the participants reported neutral or dissatisfied with their current CAM treatment. Chronic migraineurs who use CAM treatments were more likely to experience prolonged or frequent migraine headaches (p = .018, η2 = .0021), and experience greater negative life impact from their headaches (p = .000, η2 = .0172) compared to non-CAM users. CAM treatment satisfaction was inversely related to the number of psychiatric comorbidities, frequency of migraines, and number of migraine symptoms (p’s < .05). However, CAM treatment satisfaction was more strongly correlated with migraine outcomes than psychiatric comorbidities.ConclusionsChronic migraineurs often pursue multiple CAM treatments in spite of low levels of satisfaction with those treatments. Patients who experience relief from traditional treatments are less likely to seek the out additional CAM treatments. Thus it is often the sicker migraine patients who use CAM. More attention is needed to consider migraine treatment resistance, and psychological factors in planning the treatment of chronic migraineurs as those factors may play an important role in treatment choices by patients.
Highlights
Chronic migraine is a disabling condition that impacts multiple aspects of migraineurs’ lives
In order to address gaps in previous studies mentioned above, the present study investigated the data collected on the web-community in order to provide insights into (1) the characteristics of chronic migraine sufferers, (2) chronic migraineurs who use complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) treatment compared to who do not use CAM treatment; (3) the prevalence of different types of CAM use; and (4) the details of negative life impact affected by migraine; and (5) the relationship among satisfaction with current CAM use, negative life impact, migraine outcomes, and psychiatric comorbidities among chronic migraineurs
There was a significant effect of CAM status on negative life impact (p = .000, η2 = .0172), years since first migraine (p = .018, η2 = .0021), migraine frequency (p = .001, η2 = .0038), number of migraine symptoms (p = .000, η2 = .1253), number of psychiatric comorbid disorders (p = .000, η2 = .0266) and triggers to migraine (p = .000, η2 = .0555). These results indicated that CAM users experienced significantly more negative life impact, suffered from migraine lasting more than 4 h for more days per month and for more years, experienced more
Summary
Chronic migraine is a disabling condition that impacts multiple aspects of migraineurs’ lives. Pharmacological treatments can help to treat the pain associated with migraine headache, chronic migraineurs often experience side-effects of pharmacological treatments. Those experiences may contribute to the observed growth in complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) use among migraineurs. The number of migraineurs who are using CAM treatment in conjunction with traditional medical treatments has been growing over the years (Eisenberg et al 1998; Jacobson et al 2009; Kaptchuck and Eisenberg 1998) Consistent with this pattern, a number of studies investigating the prevalence and patterns of CAM treatment in migraineurs have been slowly growing, previous studies were conducted within individual headache clinics with limited populations (Adams et al 2013; Wells et al 2011)
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