Epidemiology of migraine in Spain and Latin America

Introduction. Migraine is a very disabling disease that has a great impact on patients' quality of life and interferes in their personal, social, work and family spheres. From a historical point of view, the connection between the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America has been very important, and so it seems reasonable to find there are parallels in the epidemiology of this disease, given the role that certain genetic and lifestyle-related determinants have in its natural history. Aim. To conduct a detailed review of the descriptive epidemiological studies of migraine in Spain and Latin America. Development. Literature search of epidemiological studies on migraine in our country and in Latin America. The population studied, the methodology, the questionnaire used for diagnosis and the prevalence data were analysed. Altogether 23 studies were evaluated. Conclusions. Not all countries have population-based epidemiological studies of migraine, and most of them were conducted more than 10 years ago. Moreover, a wide range of methodologies were applied. The prevalence data obtained in the selected studies, with the exception of some conducted in Brazil and Peru, are very similar to those found in Spain.