Near to 20% of patients who have a headache during acute phase of covid develop a daily chronic headacheaccording to the results of a study published in the journal ‘Cephalalgia‘, official publication of the International Headache Society, and carried out by members of the Headache Study Group of the Spanish Society of Neurology (SEN). This research has analyzed the evolution of more than 900 Spanish patients with covid they suffered headache as a symptom of this disease.
“Headache is a common symptom of covid and also a common symptom among people who have overcome the disease, but hardly any studies have been carried out that allow us to know the evolution of this long term symptom. For this reason, we carried out this work, in which we have included more than 900 patients from six Spanish hospitals and studied their evolution for nine months”, explains Dr. David García Azorín, study co-author and member of the SEN.
Persistent at 9 months
Of all the patients included in the study, about half they had no record headaches, and although the mean duration of the headache was 2 weeks, in approximately one-fifth of the patients it became persistent and followed a chronic daily pattern: in 19% of the patients the headache persisted at 3 months and in 16% the headache persisted at 9 months.
Besides, the intensity of headache during the acute phase of covid was associated with longer headache duration. “We found that in cases where the headache persists after 2 months, it is quite likely that it will remain present over time. And also that when the headache persists for a month, there is a 50% chance that the headache will still be present 9 months later. This shows the importance of prompt evaluation of patients with persistent headache after suffering from covid”, comments Dr. Jesús Porta Etessam, study co-author and Vice President of the SEN.
Similarity of symptoms
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“From the SEN we are convinced that, if this symptom were addressed correctly in these patients from the beginning, many of the problems of chronicity of this disease would be avoided. In any case, to date, there are no specific therapies, so that most doctors treat postcovid headaches based on the similarity of symptoms with other primary headaches. Considering the impact of headache on patients’ quality of life, controlled studies of potential treatments and their effectiveness are urgently needed,” adds Dr. Patricia Pozo Rosichco-author of the study.
Another of the conclusions of this study is that, more frequently, patients with persistent headache at 9 months have a headache with migraine-like characteristics. In addition, patients with persistent headache after 9 months are mostly older people, more often women, than those with less often had suffered from pneumonia during covid, and whose headache has a slightly lower intensityis throbbing, is accompanied by photophobia and/or phonophobia and worsens with physical activity.