Migraine: women suffer the most, but care less

Women are more affected by migraine and earlier, but less well. Nearly eight out of ten patients are women and the onset of the disease is recorded on average at 21.4 years of age, compared to 26.1 years for men. The disease manifests itself early, before the age of 18, for 42.1% of female patients, compared to 26% of men, yet women are neglected and the timing of diagnosis is dilated. The "Living with migraine" research carried out by Censis emerges from the research sponsored by Eli Lilly, Novartis and Teva on a sample of 695 patients aged 18 to 65 with migraine and a focus on cluster headache. The research showed that migraine tends to be neglected and recognized with delay. 58.9% of patients go to the doctor within a year of the first symptoms appearing, men more than women, but 20.7% wait more than five. It is women who linger more. The average time to reach a diagnosis is 7.1 years: 7.8 years for women, 4.1 years for men. Therefore, in many cases the pathology remains undiagnosed for a long time: 28.1% had the diagnosis within a year of the first symptoms, 30.5% had to wait between 2 and 5 years, 23.4% more than ten years. "Migraine is a pain without matter, it cannot be seen and cannot be objectivated," explains Gianluca Coppola, a neurological researcher at the Department of Medical-Surgical Sciences and Biotechnologies of Sapienza, Pontino Center of Latina. For Coppola, in addition to recognizing the chronic headache as a social disease (there was the dismissal of a text in the Chamber, now the scheduling in the Senate is awaited), it is necessary to provide funds because it is fundamental to make multidisciplinary headache clinics. "With the research we have tried - Ketty adds instead of Censis - to tell the experience of the disease. What emerged is a condition of social undervaluation that sometimes involves the same people, who take a while to become aware that they have a disease".