Cannabis may lead to “rebound” headaches in migraine patients – study

New findings suggest cannabis could lead to “rebound” or medication overuse headaches, in patients living with chronic migraine.

Using cannabis for relief from migraines may be associated with developing “rebound” headaches, according to researchers in the US.

“Rebound” headache, also known as medication overuse headache, occurs when pain medication is overused by patients who have an underlying primary headache disorder such as migraine.

The findings are from a preliminary study released on March 1, 2021, by a team of researchers at Stanford University.

For the study, researchers looked at the records of 368 people who had chronic migraine for at least a year. Chronic migraine is defined as 15 or more headache days per month.

A total of 150 of the people were using cannabis and 218 were not.

The researchers looked at who had medication overuse headache and other factors that could affect the development of overuse headache, such as frequency of migraines, overuse of other medications for acute migraine and how long they had chronic migraine.

Of the 368 people, 212 had medication overuse headache and 156 did not.

They found that the people using cannabis were six times more likely to have medication overuse headaches than those who did not use cannabis.

People who were using opioids were also more likely to have current cannabis use.

Previous research has shown that opioids and cannabis can both influence the part of the brain called the periaqueductal gray, which has been linked to migraine.

The findings will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s 73rd Annual Meeting being held virtually April 17-22, 2021.

“Many people with chronic migraine are already self-medicating with cannabis, and there is some evidence that cannabis can help treat other types of chronic pain,” said study author Niushen Zhang, M.D., of Stanford University School of Medicine in Stanford, Calif., and a member of the American Academy of Neurology.

“However, we found that people who were using cannabis had significantly increased odds of also having medication overuse headache, or rebound headache, compared to people who were not using cannabis.”

A limitation of the study is that it was retrospective; longitudinal studies will be needed to further explore cause and effect of cannabis use and medication overuse headache in patients with chronic migraine.