Migraine Might Lower Breast Cancer Risk

Li noted that more work needs to be done to nail down the reason for the apparent protective effect of migraine for breast cancer. "Advancing our understanding of the mechanisms of migraine may improve our understanding of how we could potentially reduce breast cancer risk," he said.

Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, thinks the finding is interesting, but has no clinical implications.

"There is a decreased risk for women with migraines to develop breast cancer," Lichtenfeld said. "But in practical implications -- what should a woman do differently -- there is no action a woman or her health-care professional would take as a result of this report."

Migraine expert Dr. Stephen Silberstein, director of the Jefferson Headache Center at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, said the findings are flawed, because using self-reported migraine data is not sufficient to determine whether the women actually suffered migraine or not.

"This study doesn't prove anything," Silberstein said. "It's not that I don't believe the results, it's that the results are not believable."

More information

For more on breast cancer, visit the U.S. National Cancer Institute.

SOURCES: Christopher I. Li, M.D., Ph.D., epidemiologist, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle; Stephen Silberstein, M.D., director, Jefferson Headache Center, Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, Philadelphia; Ellen Drexler, M.D., associate director, Division of Neurology, Maimonides Medical Center, Brooklyn, N.Y.; Len Lichtenfeld, M.D., deputy chief medical officer, American Cancer Society, Atlanta; November 2008,Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention