July 14th, 2009

The Wall Street Journal today reports on a study that found that women who get migraines are less likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer, and a few others.

Writes the WSJ:

Migraines and Breast Cancer: Women with a history of migraines were 74% as likely to have had breast cancer as women who reported no migraines, according to a study in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention. The study, one of the largest to connect the two diseases, analyzed 4,678 women free of breast cancer and found 20% had been diagnosed with migraines. Among a similar-size group of women with the cancer, 15% had been diagnosed with migraines. The reduced risk was similar among both pre- and postmenopausal women, and even for women who drank alcohol or smoked tobacco. The association between migraines and breast cancer is of particular interest because both diseases are influenced by hormonal changes, the researchers said.

Caveat: The specific biological link between the diseases is still poorly understood. Also, the researchers didn’t track the use of migraine medication, which they say may have accounted for a small but significant part of the decreased breast-cancer risk. (Read more.)

Mental Health: People who were married or lived with a partner around age 50 retained much more cognitive function two decades later than people who at midlife were single, divorced or widowed, according to a study in BMJ. In one finding, subjects who were widowed around age 50 and continued to live without a partner were nearly eight times as likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease as people who cohabited or were married throughout that time.

Caveat: All of the study’s subjects lived in Finland, so it is possible that genetic or social factors could lead to different results in other countries. (Read more.)

Stress and Risk: Stress increases the difference in risk-taking behavior between the sexes, causing men to take even more risks and women to take even fewer, according a study in PLoS ONE. Earlier studies had shown men take risks more often than women, but the researchers found that this gap widened—at least in a gambling simulation—after they induced stress by submerging each subject’s nondominant hand in a pitcher of ice water.

Caveat: The study used just 45 subjects and didn’t examine whether psychological stress caused a similar effect. (Read more.)

Get more tidbits on medical studies at the WSJ.