Cluster headache associated with tobacco use or second hand smoke
Unique to cluster headache is its association with a personal history of cigarette smoking. Greater than 80% of cluster headache patients have a prolonged history of tobacco usage prior to cluster headache onset. Cluster headache may also be associated with a history of having been raised in a home in which family members were smokers.
The publication:
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Headache. 2009 Oct 5. [Epub ahead of print]
Cluster Headache As the Result of Secondhand Cigarette Smoke Exposure During Childhood.
Summary of the abstract
Unique to cluster headache (CH) compared with all other primary headache conditions is its association with a personal history of cigarette smoking. Greater than 80% of CH patients have a prolonged history of tobacco usage prior to CH onset.
How tobacco exposure can lead to CH has not yet been elucidated. As secondhand smoke exposure during childhood has been linked to multiple medical illnesses could CH also be the result of childhood exposure to tobacco smoke?
Results from a recent, extensive survey suggest that CH can result from secondhand cigarette smoke exposure during childhood. Greater than 60% of non-smoking CH patients had parents who smoked.
Strengthening the probable association between secondhand smoke exposure and the development of CH is the fact that double the number of survey responders developed CH at or before 20 years of age if during their childhood they lived with a parent who smoked cigarettes.
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Comments:
Given that in one case (a long personal history of smoking) the level of exposure would be quite high, or at least substantially higher than the exposure due to second hand smoke, might it be that the length of exposure (in years) is as significant as the amount to which one is exposed per year? Children raised in the home of a smoker would then have had relatively low level exposure, but for many years, prior to their 20th birthday.
Cigarette smoke is a potent activator of NF-kB.