Headache
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The expansion of technologies available for the study of migraine pathophysiology has evolved greatly over the last 15 years. Two areas of rapid progress are investigations focusing on the genetics of migraine and others utilizing novel functional neuroimaging techniques. ⋯ At the same time, neuroimaging studies have provided novel insights into the altered neuronal and network dynamics of the migrainous brain. These 2 parallel approaches provide complementary insights into the complexity and heterogeneity of migraine.
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We aimed to identify clinical features in patients with severe headaches that predicted obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and determine clinical and sleep study characteristics that predicted headache improvement with continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP). ⋯ Headache patients should be evaluated for the presence of OSA. Treating OSA improves headaches in some patients.
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To assess pain-related attentional biases among individuals with episodic migraine. ⋯ In light of the large sample size and prior pilot testing of presented images, results suggest that episodic migraineurs do not differentially attend to headache-related facial stimuli. Given modest evidence of attentional biases among chronic headache samples, these findings suggest potential differences in attentional processing between chronic and episodic headache subforms.
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To assess the prevalence of headache in clinic and support group patients with celiac disease and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) compared with a sample of healthy controls. ⋯ Migraine was more prevalent in celiac disease and IBD subjects than in controls. Future studies should include screening migraine patients for celiac disease and assessing the effects of gluten-free diet on migraines in celiac disease.
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The aim of this study was to investigate the utility of pain descriptors (pain quality, pain intensity) assessed in a questionnaire to discriminate tension-type headache (TTH) from TTH plus migraine in a sample of adolescents. ⋯ Pain intensity and quality assessed by questionnaires are not suitable to discriminate TTH from TTH plus migraine. This may lead to inaccurate prevalence estimates in epidemiological studies and may mislead practitioners in forming diagnostic hypotheses. The exclusion of these pain descriptors in questionnaires should be considered. More research systematically assessing the diagnostic utility of verbal pain descriptors in primary care and epidemiological samples is needed.