association of general obesity with hyperhomocysteinemia in patients with migraine

Background: recent evidences have shown that obesity may affect homocysteine concentration. in addition, other studies reported that migraine is associated with high homocysteine concentration and obesity. objectives: the purpose of this study was to assess any association between general obesity and homocysteine levels in patients with migraine. patients and methods: this cross-sectional study was conducted on 121 patients with migraine, aged 15-67 years, referred to isfahan khorshid and imam mosua sader clinics in 2013. fasting serum homocysteine concentration and anthropometric measurements such as weight, height, body mass index (bmi), body fat mass (bfm) and lean body mass (lbm) were measured. the association between anthropometric measurements and homocysteine levels was examined with linear regression test, using spss software (version 18.0). results: obesity and overweight were found in 14% and 43% of patients, respectively. in addition, hyperhomocysteinemia was observed in 19.6% of women, but none of men had homocysteine levels higher than 15 μm/l. there was a significant positive association between bmi (p = 0.002), bfm (p = 0.007) and lbm (p < 0.001) with serum levels of homocysteine. these associations remained significant even after adjustment for confounding variables. moreover, in sex-stratified analyses, we found significant associations between bmi and bfm with homocysteine levels either in crude and adjusted models. however, such association was not significant for lbm (p = 0.31 for men; p = 0.06 for women). conclusions: body mass index, bfm and lbm were significantly associated with high homocysteine levels in patients with migraine. further studies are needed to confirm our findings.