Women who usually suffer from migraines may have the comfort of knowing they stand less chance of developing breast cancer, new research suggests.

Researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington, called attention to a hormone secreted b y the ovaries, testicles or adrenal glands – estrogen.
The claim that migraines and breast cancer are both associated with estrogen. High levels of estrogen are linked to an increased risk of breast cancer, and women who experience migraines are believed to have low levels of the sex hormone. So these women have a lower risk of developing breast cancer.

Overall, women who experienced migraines had a 30 percent lower risk of developing this type of cancer “compared to women who did not have a history of such headaches," the study’s authors said.

Dr. Christopher Li and colleagues analyzed two different studies conducted in the past. Of 3,412 post-menopausal women, 1,938 were diagnosed with breast cancer. The rest of them had no history of the disease, said the study, which was published in the November edition of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention. Migraines are often caused by declining estrogen levels before or during menses and stop during pregnancy when there is an augmented level of estrogen.

Given the fact that using self-reported migraine data isn’t enough to determine if the women actually suffered from migraine, the discovery is irrelevant; says migraine expert Dr. Stephen Silberstein, director of the Jefferson Headache Center at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia.