A study suggests that the risk of migraine is higher in children who are physically or emotionally abused or neglected. They are more likely to develop migraines and other kind of chronic pain conditions when they grow up.

The study was conducted by researchers at the American Headache Society’s Women’s Issues Section Research Consortium. They also found that migraineurs who were abused in their childhood either emotionally or physically have a higher number of comorbid pain conditions when compared with others who have no history of maltreatment.

The state and local child protective services (CPS) have investigated around 3.2 million reports of child abuse or neglect in the year 2007. This was confirmed in a report by the US Department of Health and Human Services.

749,000 children out of these were classified as victims by CPS with 59 percent of them classified as child neglect. 4 percent out of these had suffered emotional abuse, 8 percent sexual abuse and 11 percent physical abuse.

Gretchen E. Tietjen, M. D. from the university of Toledo Medical Center, and colleagues recruited a cross-sectional survey of headache clinic patients to conduct the study. They also assessed childhood maltreatment by using the childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) which is a 28-item self-reported quantitative measure of childhood abuse and neglect.