Association between Migraine and the Risk of Stroke: A Bayesian Meta-Analysis

There are still inconsistent results about association between migraine and stroke risk in studies. This paper was to review findings on the association between migraine (with or without aura) and stroke risk. We searched articles in the Embase and PubMed up to January 2021. Two independent reviewers extracted basic data from individual studies using a standardized form. Quality of studies was also assessed using the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale. We conducted a meta-analysis, both classical and Bayesian approaches. We identified 17 eligible studies with a sample size more than 2,788,000 participants. In the fixed effect model, the results demonstrated that migraine was positively associated with the risk of total stroke, hemorrhagic stroke, and ischemic stroke. Nevertheless, migraine was associated with only total stroke in the random effects model (risk ratio (RR) 1.31, 95%CI: 1.06-1.62). The probability that migraine increased total stroke risk was 0.978 (RR 1.31; 95% credible interval (CrI): 1.01-1.72). All types of migraine were not associated with ischemic stroke and hemorrhagic stroke. Under three prior distributions, there was no association between migraine and the risk of ischemic stroke or hemorrhagic stroke. Under the non-informative prior and enthusiastic prior, there was a high probability that migraine was associated with total stroke risk.