Headache
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This study investigated whether pain sensitivity of the pericranial musculature remains constant over the course of the day. Changes in the entire, uniformly metrically divided suprathreshold sensitivity range were measured. In 24 healthy volunteer subjects, pain was induced experimentally at 0200, 0600, 1000, 1400, 1800, and 2200 hours in the pericranial musculature. ⋯ Sensitivity to very intense headache, however, varied significantly over the course of the day: sensitivity was greatest at 0200 hours; it decreased at a constant rate until 1400 hours, and increased again continuously until 2200 hours (p less than or equal to .05). Also the findings showed significant effects of sex on the pain sensitivity of pericranial musculature for all pain intensities: women are approx. twice as sensitive as men (p less than or equal to 0.05). These results suggest that not only sex, but also time of day, must be taken into consideration in the clinical determination of pain sensitivity of pericranial musculature in the course of headache diagnostics.
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The topics of interest in this study are whether migraine patients exhibit a stereotypic reaction to a stressful stimulus which is different from the reaction of nonheadache controls and whether it is possible to predict headache activity within the migraine population. Our study population comprised 37 female migraine patients and 34 matched controls. Heart rate, skin conductance, pulse amplitude of the temporal artery and an EMG of the temporal muscle were registered during a baseline situation and during a mental stressor. ⋯ Linear combinations of psychological and psychophysiological data sets did not show an acceptable degree of accuracy in the classification of individual response profiles into groups. Within the migraine group, 54% of the average duration of migraine attacks and 33% of the variation in average maximum headache intensity could be explained by a combination of psychological, psychophysiological and socio-demographic variables. It is concluded that measures from both the psychological and the physiological domain should be included when studying the effects of stress in migraine.