Headache
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Clinical Trial
Self-reported photophobic symptoms in migraineurs and controls are reliable and predict diagnostic category accurately.
To assess the reliability of self-reported photophobia across different patient populations and to examine how visual stress thresholds and photophobic symptoms may be predictive of diagnosis. ⋯ We suggest that interictal photophobia is common in migraine and similar across different patient populations. One pathophysiological hypothesis is that interictal photophobia is associated with cortical hypersensitivity to stimulation. The predictive validity of interictal photophobic symptoms suggests that clinical diagnosis may be aided by questioning the patient about light sensitivity in the period between attacks.
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Comparative Study Clinical Trial
The occurrence of recall bias in pediatric headache: a comparison of questionnaire and diary data.
To investigate whether children and adolescents can recall prior headache complaints accurately and to study whether age, gender, headache severity, preferred coping strategies, depression, somatization, and trait anxiety are related to recall errors, causing recall bias. ⋯ Recall errors occur when children are asked to report their headaches on a retrospective questionnaire. As compared to a prospective diary, pain complaints are evaluated more negatively on a questionnaire. Other factors such as age, depression, and headache severity influence the way children and adolescents recall their headaches. To minimize bias, the use of a diary when studying recurrent headache complaints in children is recommended.
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To determine the association between childhood history of headache, adolescent stress, and headache syndromes (determined by International Headache Society criteria) in young adulthood. ⋯ Childhood headaches are related to the appraisal of life events reported during mid adolescence. Childhood headaches also appear to confer a specific risk for the development of combined headache. There was little evidence for a prospective relation between stress in mid adolescence and tension-type headache in young adulthood, supporting claims that proximal (rather than distal) stress is associated with this disorder.
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Cortical hyperexcitability is thought to explain the more enhanced contingent negative variation (CNV) amplitudes and impaired CNV habituation that have been found during the interictal period in migraine without aura. These CNV characteristics have been shown to normalize to the level of healthy controls during an attack. This study aimed to replicate the interictal findings, and additionally examine whether migraineurs show reduced CNV amplitudes during the postattack period. ⋯ The present results did not confirm the enhanced CNV early and late wave amplitudes or impaired habituation, and cortical hyperexcitability that have previously been reported in the interictal period in patients with migraine without aura. During the postattack period, a decrease in CNV early and late amplitudes was found but only after sumatriptan use. This reduction in CNV amplitudes was most prominent over the frontal cortex and could reflect cortical hypoexcitability, possibly related to a suppression of central catecholaminergic activity by sumatriptan.