Migraine sufferers might have to worry about more than just dealing with debilitating headaches.

Migraine patients could also face an increased risk of heart attacks, strokes, blood clots and irregular heart rates, a new study suggests.

The risk to heart health appears to be strongest in the first year after diagnosis of migraine, but persists for as long as two decades, said lead researcher Dr. Kasper Adelborg. He is a postdoctoral fellow of clinical epidemiology at the Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark.

"Accumulating evidence supports that migraine should be considered as an important risk factor for most cardiovascular diseases in both men and women," Adelborg said.

Migraine affects about 15 percent of people, mainly women, and was the second leading cause of years lost to disability in 2016, according to background information provided by the researchers.

For the study, Adelborg and his colleagues gathered records from patients treated at Danish hospitals and hospital outpatient clinics between 1995 and 2013. The investigators wound up with just over 51,000 migraine patients and slightly more than 510,300 non-migraine patients matched for comparison.

The findings showed that migraine patients more frequently suffered a host of heart- and blood vessel-related health problems, though a cause-and-effect relationship wasn't proven.

According to the researchers, for every 1,000 people:

25 migraine patients had a heart attack, compared with 17 migraine-free people.

45 migraine sufferers had a blood clot-related stroke versus 25 without the headache disorder.

27 migraine patients developed life-threatening blood clots in their veins, compared with 18 people without migraines.

47 people with migraine developed an irregular heartbeat, versus 34 migraine-free people.

Migraine remained linked to these heart problems even after researchers took into account other risk factors, such as excess weight or smoking.

The findings were published online Jan. 31 in the BMJ.