According to a statement by the University of Cincinnati, a migraines and asthma study released by it on Monday has found that pre-existing asthma may be an early sign of chronic migraine attacks in the future.

The university said in a statement that the study’s findings were released online previous month in the journal Headache, a publication of the American Headache Society. The study contributors include researchers from the university, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, the Montefiore Headache Center and Vedanta Research.

During the study, the researchers studied nearly 4,500 people who faced episodic migraines or less than 15 headaches every month in 2008. During their work, they analyzed data from the American Migraine Prevalence and Prevention Study.

The participants of the study completed written questionnaires both in 2008 and 2009 and then were divided into two groups. One group consisted participants with episodic migraines and coexisting asthma, whereas the other group had the ones with episodic migraines and no asthma.

After a year of following up, the researchers found that the onset of chronic migraines developed in 5.4% participants, who were also suffering from asthma and in 2.5% individuals without asthma.

In a statement, the study lead author Dr. Vincent Martin, professor of medicine at the University of Cincinnati's Division of General Internal Medicine, said, “In this study, persons with episodic migraine and asthma at baseline were more than twice as likely to develop chronic migraine after one year of follow-up as compared to those with episodic migraine but not asthma”.