Migraine Sufferers Have Double the Risk of Bell’s Palsy

HealthDay News — People who suffer from migraines may be at an increased risk of Bell’s palsy, according to a study published in Neurology.

Researchers followed two groups of 136,704 adults — one group of migraine sufferers and another group without migraines — for an average of three years.

During that time, 671 of the people in the migraine group developed Bell’s palsy, compared with 365 of the those in the non-migraine group. Even after the researchers accounted for other factors, such as sex, hypertension, and diabetes, the researchers found that people with migraines were twice as likely to develop Bell’s palsy than those without migraines.

“This is a very new association between migraine and Bell’s palsy,” Shuu-Jiun Wang, MD, of the National Yang-Ming University and Taipei Veterans General Hospital in Taiwan, said in a journal news release.

Reference

1. Peng K et al. Neurology. 2014; doi:10.1212/WNL.0000000000001124.