(June 26) -- Middle-aged women who experience migraines may have more to worry about than bad headaches.

New research suggests that women who experience migraines accompanied by auras -- sensory disturbances that signal oncoming pain -- also have increased risk of stroke and heart attacks. These women may also experience tissue death in the brain, according to a Health.com report.

A 12-year study that covered almost 28,000 female health professionals showed women who had once-a-week migraines were four times more likely to have a stroke than women without migraines.

The study also showed women who had infrequent migraines -- less than one per month -- were more than twice as likely to require a heart procedure or have a heart attack than women who were migraine-free.

However, the researchers behind the study said the risk of having a stroke or heart attack remained relatively small for women with migraines.

"Overall, this is not a study that should scare women with migraines with auras," the study's lead author, Dr. Tobias Kurth said.

Another study on migraines, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, traced a group of nearly 5,000 Icelandic men and women for 26 years. Results of brain scans showed 23 percent of women who suffered migraines had brain infarcts, compared with 15 percent of non-sufferers who developed infarcts. Brain infarcts are areas of tissue death that have unclear health implications.

"The lesions are clinically silent; it is absolutely unclear if they are harmful," says Kurth, who wrote an editorial accompanying the brain study. "Based on current knowledge, they are not."