Patients Who Get Migraines More Likely to Experience IBS, Peptic Ulcers

Credit: Unsplash / Adrian Swancar

Patients with migraine are at greater risk for at least two common gastrointestinal disorders—but interestingly, not others similar to them, according to recent research.

A team of investigators identified associations between migraines and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and peptic ulcer. While the mechanisms of migraines are not entirely understood, gastrointestinal disorders can often co-occur without a causal link between the two conditions.

In the cross-sectional study, the investigators examined whether migraines are linked to (IBS) , peptic ulcers, Helicobacter pylori (HP) infections, celiac disease, Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis using baseline data of 489,753 participants in the UK Biobank, a large prospective cohort containing health-related information from more than 500,000 individuals. This included 14,180 migraine patients from the same cohort.

The team found that patients with migraines were more than twice likely to have IBS, and more than 50 percent more likely to have peptic ulcers. On the other hand, there was no association with HP infection, celiac disease, Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis after adjusting outcoms for multiple testing.

“Migraine was associated with IBS and peptic ulcers in this large population-based cohort,” the authors wrote. “The associations with HP infection, celiac disease, Crohn's disease, and ulcerative colitis did not reach significance, suggesting a weaker link between migraine and autoimmune gastrointestinal conditions or HP infection.”

Migraines currently affect 14 percent of women and 6 percent of men, making it one of the world’s most common neurological disorders. Some of the associations between migraines and gastrointestinal disorders suggest the disorder may be related to a disruption in the gut-brain axis that causes a decrease in serotonin levels, which shows there are bidirectional relationships between neurological and gastrointestinal symptoms.

Another mechanism that could explain this include is increased gut permeability and inflammatory processes.

“The fact that IBS and peptic ulcers were significantly associated with migraine, while celiac disease, Crohn's disease, and ulcerative colitis were not, could be related to differences in pathophysiology,” the authors wrote. “Specifically, migraine was not significantly associated with any of the three autoimmune conditions included in the analyses.”

However, there were some limitations of the study that warrant further examination for future studies.For example, the prevalence rates of gastrointestinal disorders in the study population were generally low and the data was derived from self-reported illnesses.

An original version of this article was published on sister site HCPLive.