Hwang JH, et al. - Experts gauged the risk of cochlear disorders for patients with a history of migraines. Among patients with a history of migraines, a significantly higher risk of cochlear disorders, especially tinnitus, was seen. The presence and/or concept of “cochlear migraine” was supported in the findings.

Methods

• In this study, authors used claims data from the Taiwan Longitudinal Health Insurance Database 2005 to identify 1056 patients with migraines diagnosed between January 1, 1996 and December 31, 2012.
• They also identified a total of 4,224 controls from the same database based on propensity score matching.
• They performed statistical analysis from January 23, 1996 to December 28, 2012.
• Researchers compared the incidence rate of cochlear disorders (tinnitus, sensorineural hearing impairment, and/or sudden deafness) between the cohorts by use of the Kaplan-Meier method.
• To examine the association of cochlear disorders with migraines, the Cox proportional hazards regression model was also used.

Results

• Findings suggested that out of the 1,056 patients with migraines, 672 were women and 384 were men, and the mean (SD) age was 36.7 (15.3) years.
• Results demonstrated that, the crude hazard ratio for cochlear disorders in the migraine cohort was 2.83 (95% CI, 2.01-3.99), and the adjusted hazard ratio was 2.71 (95% CI, 1.86-3.93) compared with the nonmigraine cohort.
• Findings suggested that the incidence rates of cochlear disorders were 81.4 (95% CI, 81.1-81.8) per 1 million person-years for the migraine cohort and 29.4 (95% CI, 29.2-29.7) per 1 million person-years for the nonmigraine cohort.
• In the migraine cohort (12.2%), the cumulative incidence of cochlear disorders was significantly higher than that in the matched nonmigraine cohort (5.5%).
• Compared with the nonmigraine cohort, the adjusted hazard ratios in the migraine cohort were 3.30 (95% CI, 2.17-5.00) for tinnitus, 1.03 (95% CI, 0.17-6.41) for sensorineural hearing impairment, and 1.22 (95% CI, 0.53-2.83) for sudden deafness, as seen on subgroup analysis.