Current pain and headache reports
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Curr Pain Headache Rep · Dec 2010
ReviewTension type headache in adolescence and childhood: where are we now?
Tension type headache (TTH) is a primary headache disorder considered common in children and adolescents. It remains debatable whether TTH and migraine are separate biological entities. This review summarizes the most recent literature of TTH with regards to children and adolescents. Further studies of TTH are needed to develop a biologically based classification system that may be facilitated through understanding changes in the developing brain during childhood and adolescence.
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Curr Pain Headache Rep · Dec 2010
ReviewCervical facet arthropathy and occipital neuralgia: headache culprits.
Cervicogenic headache (CH) is pain referred from the neck. Two common causes are cervical facet arthropathy and occipital neuralgia. ⋯ The treatment of cervical facet arthropathy as the source of CH is best approached with a multidimensional plan focusing on physical therapy and/or manual therapy. The effective management of occipital neuralgia remains challenging, but both injections and neuromodulation are promising options.
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Curr Pain Headache Rep · Dec 2010
ReviewTension-type headache and women: do sex hormones influence tension-type headache?
Most of the world's population has suffered from a tension-type headache (TTH) at some point in their lives. The pathophysiology of this disease is not well understood, but TTH shares many features with migraine, leading to the belief that TTH and migraine may be on different ends of the same disease spectrum. There are many shared triggers between migraine and TTH, menstruation being one of them. Does menses being a trigger for TTH make TTH more like migraine, or does the role of sex hormones in TTH give us insight into the unique pathophysiology of this disease? This article will review TTH, concentrating on the role of sex hormones as a trigger for TTH.
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Curr Pain Headache Rep · Dec 2010
Patient-derived determinants for participation in placebo-controlled clinical trials for fibromyalgia.
Perspectives of patients with fibromyalgia influence their likelihood of participating in randomized placebo-controlled trials and potentially clash with current, well-established methodology of randomized controlled trial design. Mandates to use only acetaminophen for breakthrough pain and that require discontinuation of concomitant medications, especially in studies lacking an active comparator arm, could bias a trial cohort to thereby reduce the generalizability of study findings and conclusions. This study evaluates factors affecting willingness to participate in such clinical trials, including the impact of altruism, payment, study duration, forced discontinuation of specific medications, and subject demographics for patients seen by rheumatologists proficient and avidly interested in treating fibromyalgia.
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Tension-type headache (TTH) is the most prevalent type of headache across all age groups worldwide. TTH is common, disabling, and associated with medical and psychiatric comorbidities. This review will focus on the epidemiologies of episodic and chronic TTH in various age groups, factors associated with progression and remission, comorbidities, and the burden of TTH.