TOPLINE:

More than one third of patients with migraine aged 10 years or older had comorbid depression or anxiety, with a higher prevalence among women, older adults, and individuals living in more deprived areas.

METHODOLOGY:

• Researchers in Sweden conducted a nationwide cross-sectional study to evaluate the association between small-area deprivation and the prevalence of comorbid depression or anxiety among patients with migraine.
• They used data from linked registers and included 372,926 patients with migraine aged 10 years or older living in Sweden between 2015 and 2023, all of whom had a registered personal identification number and a primary residential address within one of the 5984 small geographical areas defined by Statistics Sweden.
• Comorbid depression or anxiety was defined as having at least one diagnosis of depression or anxiety or being prescribed an antidepressant during the migraine-exposed period (defined as 3 months before the first recorded migraine to 3 months after the last recorded migraine).
• Small-area deprivation was measured using a Swedish index that ranked the 5984 areas from least to most deprived based on indicators of income and capital, education, employment, and housing.

TAKEAWAY:

• Overall, 35.7% of patients with migraine had comorbid depression or anxiety during the migraine-exposed period, with a median migraine-exposed period of 482 days.
• Patients with migraine who lived in areas with very high deprivation had an 18% higher prevalence of comorbid depression or anxiety than those who lived in areas with very low deprivation (adjusted prevalence ratio [PR], 1.18), with similar patterns observed for areas with high (adjusted PR, 1.14) and low (adjusted PR, 1.09) deprivation (P < .001 for all).
• The prevalence of comorbid depression or anxiety was 55% higher in women with migraine than in men with the condition (P < .001).
• Patients with migraine in all older age groups had a higher prevalence of comorbid depression or anxiety than patients younger than 20 years (P < .001 for all).

IN PRACTICE:

"Findings suggest that comorbid depression or anxiety in migraine patients is common in our study population and reinforces the importance of considering all three conditions in clinical encounters, particularly in deprived residential areas where comorbidity occurrence is more frequent," the authors wrote.

SOURCE:

The study was led by Emily White Johansson, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. It was published online on March 23, 2026, in Cephalalgia.

LIMITATIONS:

The population-level prevalence of comorbid depression or anxiety was underestimated because data were obtained from healthcare registers. A large proportion of patients with migraine were identified using data from prescription registers only. The study's observational design may have introduced residual confounding, which limited establishing causal inferences.

DISCLOSURES:

This study was sponsored by Pfizer Sweden. One author declared receiving honoraria from various pharmaceutical companies and holding a patent related to a biofeedback intervention for migraine prophylaxis. Two authors reported being employees of or holding stock in Pfizer.

This article was created using several editorial tools, including AI, as part of the process. Human editors reviewed this content before publication.