Symptoms and diseases and smoking habits in female episodic cluster headache and migraine patients.

Twenty-seven episodic female cluster headache patients were compared to 27 age-matched female migraine patients with regard to occurrence of symptoms and diseases other than headache, and also with regard to tobacco consumption. Some symptoms and diseases were found to occur significantly or almost significantly more often in the cluster headache patients than in the migraine patients; Chronic fatigue (p < 0.01), vertigo (p < 0.05), arthralgia (p < 0.05), back pain (p = 0.05), spontaneous ecchymoses (p = 0.05) and constipation and/or periodic diarrhea (p = 0.09). There were significantly fewer persons who had never smoked in the cluster headache group than in the migraine group (p < 0.01). The extent of smoking was significantly greater in the cluster headache group than in the migraine group, both as to the number of cigarettes smoked per day (p < 0.001) and as to smoking years (p < 0.001).