Headache
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While nausea is a defining feature of migraine, the association of nausea with other headache features and its influence on the burden of migraine have not been quantified. Population-based data were used to elucidate the relative frequency and burden of migraine-associated nausea in persons with migraine. ⋯ High-frequency migraine-associated nausea is common and is a marker for severe, debilitating migraine. Nausea makes an independent contribution to migraine-associated disability and impact. Management strategies that take nausea into account could reduce the burden of migraine. Nausea is an important target for monitoring and treatment.
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To assess the ability of patients, during an acute migraine attack, to successfully self-inject a single dose of sumatriptan using a novel sumatriptan auto-injector (Alsuma(®)), and to evaluate the safety, tolerability, and effectiveness of this sumatriptan auto-injector during an acute migraine attack. ⋯ The majority of injection-experienced patients reported the pre-assembled, single-use sumatriptan auto-injector to be an easy-to-use, preferred treatment for an acute migraine attack. The study found the auto-injector to be safe and well tolerated, with levels of injection site reactions that were mild and infrequent.
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US Headache Consortium Guidelines state that persons with migraine with headache-related disability should receive certain acute treatments including migraine-specific and other medications. However, many eligible individuals do not receive these therapies. Individuals with migraine may experience barriers to receiving minimal appropriate care. We aimed to identify barriers to care in a population sample of individuals with episodic migraine. We assessed barriers at 3 levels: medical consultation, diagnosis, and acute pharmacologic therapy use and assessed the contribution of socioeconomic, demographic, and headache-specific variables to these barriers. ⋯ Among persons with migraine in need of medical care (MIDAS Grade II or greater), only one quarter traversed the 3 steps we proposed to be necessary to achieving minimally appropriate care (consulting, diagnosis, and treatment/medication use). Health insurance status was an important predictor of consulting. Among consulters, women were far more likely to be diagnosed than men, suggesting that gender bias in diagnosis may be an important barrier for men. There were economic barriers related to use of appropriate prescription medications. Public health efforts should focus on improving consultation rates, particularly in the uninsured and diagnostic rates particularly in males with migraine.
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The immense burden of headache disorders in America has been very rarely considered during the formal deliberations of Congress. On February 14, 2012, the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions of the United States Senate held a public hearing on Pain in America: Exploring Challenges to Relief. During that hearing, Senator Bernard Sanders of Vermont entered into the Congressional Record testimony on the impact of headache disorders on behalf of the Alliance for Headache Disorders Advocacy.
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Allodynia is considered a phenomenon of central sensitization that may lead to migraine transformation, lowering the attack threshold. Migraine triggers are factors that may induce headache attacks in susceptible individuals. We hypothesize that because allodynia decreases the migraine-attack threshold, allodynic migraineurs are more susceptible to triggers than the non-allodynic ones. ⋯ Migraineurs with moderate/severe allodynia had more triggers than those with no/mild allodynia. It is unknown if those with moderate/severe allodynia are more susceptible to triggers, or repetitive stimulation of the trigeminal system by triggers resulted in moderate/severe allodynia.