Adolescents who suffer from migraine headaches are more likely to get lower grades and have trouble attending school, according to a new study of sibling pairs.
Suffering from migraines was associated with a 5 percent drop in high school GPA, a 5 percent drop in the likelihood of graduating high school and a 15 percent reduction in the likelihood that a teen-ager would attend college, the researchers reported.
It should be noted, however, that 30 to 40 percent of the reductions could be explained by excused absences from school, difficulty paying attention in class and trouble completing homework.
Joseph Sabia, a public policy professor at American University in Washington, D.C., and Daniel Rees, an economics professor at University of Colorado Denver, conducted the study by examining data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, according to a news release from American University.
Sabia and Rees said that teens who had nonmigraine headaches didn't suffer the same drops in academic performance.
By focusing on differences between siblings, Rees stated in the news release, "we can rule out the possibility that family-level factors such as socioeconomic status are driving the relationship between migraine headache and academic performance."
The findings were presented earlier this week at the Western Economic Association International's annual conference in Vancouver, British Columbia. It was the first study of its kind to examine the effect of migraine headaches on adolescents in regard to future academic achievement.
Sabia and Rees conducted the study by analyzing migraine experiences and high school grades of 214 siblings from 105 families. They obtained information on high school completion and college attendance from 280 siblings belonging to 137 families, according to the news release.
