Fever: a novelty among the symptoms accompanying migraine attacks in children

D. Lendvai, P. Verdecchia, R. Crenca, A. Redondi, T. Braccili, E. Turri, S. Lucarelli

Department of Pediatrics Division, “Diagnosi e Cura Cefalee Infantili”, “La Sapienza” University – Rome (Italy)

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• Neurology

Abstract. – Our casistic of 1787 children with headache, is made up of 943 males (53%) and 844 females (47%) aged 3-14 years. 1724 had primary headache. To make a precise diagnosis of primary headache, all the children have been subjected to a rigorous anamnesis, physical and diagnostic examination (blood, urine test, head x-rays-scans, sight test with cat’s eyes). Symptoms that frequently accompany headache are: phono-photophobia, (47%), pallor (43%) nausea (41%) vomit (31%) intolerance to movement (40%) and fever (9%). We especially focused on fever which presented together with migraine in 156 (9%) of the 1724 subjects examined. Headache is an important syndrome and frequent in early childhood. Actually the hypothesis used to explain the etiopathogenetic mechanism is based on a disregulation of the neurotrasmitters like serotonin, catecholamine and the prostaglandins.