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Pharmacological Trials in Migraine: It's Time to Reappraise Where the Headache Is and What the Pain Is Like
Author(s) -
Barbanti Piero,
Egeo Gabriella
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
headache: the journal of head and face pain
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.14
H-Index - 119
eISSN - 1526-4610
pISSN - 0017-8748
DOI - 10.1111/head.12498
Subject(s) - triptans , migraine , medicine , aura , clinical trial , botulinum toxin , trigeminal neuralgia , rizatriptan , disease , intensive care medicine , physical therapy , physical medicine and rehabilitation , anesthesia , receptor , sumatriptan , agonist
Most pharmacological trials deal with migraine as if it were a clinically homogeneous disease, and when detailing its characteristics, they usually report only the presence, or absence, of aura and attack frequency but provide no information on pain location, a non‐trivial clinical detail . The past decade has witnessed growing emerging evidence suggesting that individuals with unilateral pain, especially those with associated unilateral cranial autonomic symptoms, are more responsive than others to trigeminal‐targeted symptomatic and preventive therapy with drugs such as triptans or botulinum toxin. A simple way for migraine research treatment to take a step forward might be to step back, reappraise, and critically evaluate easily obtainable patient‐reported clinical findings along with current knowledge on pain features.