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Abstract
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OBJECTIVE: The relationship between migraine and cognitive symptoms in Veterans is a complex issue, made more challenging by the high prevalence of traumatic brain injury (TBI) in this population. This study examined the relationship between migraine, TBI, and subjective cognitive function.
METHOD: Participants included 338,217 Veterans enrolled in the Million Veteran Program who completed the Medical Outcomes Study Cognitive Functioning Scale Revised (MOS-Cog-R), a self-report measure of cognitive functioning. Veterans were categorized into the following groups: (1) both migraine and TBI history (n = 7828), (2) migraine-only (n = 22,252), (3) TBI-only (n = 24,078), and (4) no history of migraine or TBI (n = 284,059). MOS-Cog-R scales were compared across groups using the Kruskal-Wallis Test for omnibus differences and Dunn's test and Cliff's Delta for effect size calculations of differences between groups.
RESULTS: The migraine/TBI group reported the highest prevalence of cognitive symptoms across all domains (range: 76.1% for confusion to 90.5% for forgetfulness). In contrast, the no migraine/TBI group had the lowest prevalence of cognitive problems (range: 32.0% for confusion to 63.7% for forgetfulness). All omnibus group differences were statistically significant (p < 0.001), and nearly all pairwise comparisons were significant, except for some of the migraine-only vs. TBI-only group comparisons.
CONCLUSION: Results showed a "dose-response" relationship between diagnostic group and subjective cognitive symptoms, such that the migraine/TBI group fared the worst, followed by the TBI-only and migraine-only groups, and finally the no migraine/TBI group.
FINDINGS set the stage for follow-up work to be conducted within MVP that will address the neurobiological underpinnings of cognitive distress in this population.
Language: en |