Patients with migraine have an elevated risk of ischaemic stroke and opioid therapy may increase the risk of an event, according to a US study.

The findings, however, found no evidence migraine in the elderly was linked with coronary heart disease.

In the retrospective cohort study using a 5% random sample of US Medicare patient data spanning 2008-2017, some 38,000 patients aged over 65 with a history of migraine were compared with four times that number of matched controls who did not have the condition.

Although opioids are not recommended in US guidelines for migraine, they were used by 36% of the people with migraine without a history of CVD and 47% of those who had such a history.