The Association Between Blood Pressure and Headache in Postmenopausal Women: A Prospective Hospital-Based Study

BACKGROUND: Headache is the most frequent condition for outpatient patients because of neurological problems, but little is known about predisposing and enabling factors for headache patients. AIM: To investigate the association between blood pressure (BP) and headache in postmenopausal women. METHODS: The postmenopausal women who were admitted to our hospital from January 2015 to December 2019 were screening according to the criteria. Their systolic BP (SBP), diastolic BP (DBP), pulse pressure (PP) were assessed and the information of age, body mass index, smoking status, caffeine consumption, cholesterol levels, and daily alcohol use were collected. Multiple logistic regression model was established to evaluate the association between BP and headache. RESULTS: A total of 1571 postmenopausal women were included in the analysis, including 953 headache-free population and 618 headache participants during the studied periods. We found that increasing SBP and PP were associated with the lower occurrence of migraine, tension-type headache (TTH), probable migraine, and unclassified headache (P < 0.05). However, there was a negative association between DBP levels and the new occurrence of overall headache, but we did not find any relations of DBP with any subtypes of headache. CONCLUSION: There were negative associations of SBP and PP with new occurrence of headache, especially migraine and TTH, but there is no relationship between DBP and the subsequent development of headache.