Migraine headaches affect approximately 17 percent of the population at sometime during their life, accounting for more than 1 billion people who suffer from the condition worldwide.
The significantly higher rates among women are hormonally driven.
A migraine headache is most commonly experienced as a throbbing pain that is felt only on one side of the head. These headaches are caused by abnormal brain activity that may be triggered by stress, certain foods, environmental factors, or other factors.
The exact chain of events that set off migraines remains unknown. Symptoms accompanying the head pain may include nausea, vomiting and sensitivity to light.
Some migraine sufferers experience attacks accompanied by an aura that causes vision disturbances such as arcs of sparkling light, zigzag lines, blurry spots or loss of vision.
The researchers found that 23 percent of women having history of migraines with aura had suffered microscopic brain damage, whereas only 15 percent of women with no history of migraines had evidence of the brain lesions
This led to the determination that the women in the migraine-with-aura group were 1.5 times more likely to develop lesions than other women in the registry.
Kurth pointed out that although the incidence of stroke in women with migraines with aura in the study was higher than that of women who had no migraines, it was still very low at a risk of only 3 percent. He also noted that the study does not reveal whether migraines are causally connected to strokes or vascular damage by any known biological mechanism.