Prevalence of primary headaches in children from Belgrade, Serbia

The aim of our study is to estimate the prevalence of migraine and tension-type headaches in 7-12-year-old school children from Belgrade. The sample was drawn from a total of 1259 school children from randomly selected primary schools. The diagnosis was made on the basis of a clinical interview combined with the neurological examination. The prevalence of migraine increases with age from 0.5% at the age of seven, to 6.8% at the age of 12. Female to male ratio inverts with age: males predominate at age 7-9, but females predominate at age 10-12. The estimated prevalence of tension-type headache increases with age from 0.5% in 7-year olds to 2.4% in 12-year olds. Statistically, the onset of migraine occurs significantly earlier than that of tension-type headache. Migraine and tension-type headache are frequent headache types and have different demographic characteristics among children. (c) 2006 European Paediatric Neurology Society. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.