Current migraine management – patient acceptability and future approaches

Abstract

Despite its high prevalence and individual as well as societal burden, migraine remains underdiagnosed and undertreated. In recent years, the options for the management of migraine patients have greatly expanded. A number of drugs belonging to various pharmacological classes and deliverable by several routes are now available both for the acute and the preventive treatments of migraine. Nevertheless, disability and satisfaction remain low in many subjects because treatments are not accessible, not optimized, not effective, or simply not tolerated. There is thus still considerable room for better education, for more effi cient therapies and for greater support from national health systems. In spite of useful internationally accepted guidelines, anti-migraine treatment has to be individually tailored to each patient taking into account the migraine subtype, the ensuing disability, the patient's previous history and present expectations, and the co-morbid disorders. In this article we will summarize the phenotypic presentations of migraine and review recommendations for acute and preventive treatment, highlighting recent advances which are relevant for clinical practice in terms of both diagnosis and management.

Information Needs and Information-Seeking Behavior of Italian Neurologists: Exploratory Mixed Methods Study

“…Conversely, accurate migraine diagnosis and subclassification are still challenging due to the lack of objective gold standard diagnostic criteria [21][22][23]. As a consequence, neurologists treating patients with migraine must cope with the lack of robust guidelines and shortage of authoritative sources of information and educational activities [24].…”

Electroacupuncture at Acupoints Reverses Plasma Glutamate, Lipid, and LDL/VLDL in an Acute Migraine Rat Model: A 1H NMR‐Based Metabolomic Study

“…Migraine is one of the most common neurological disorders characterized by recurrent unilateral, throbbing headaches and neurological dysfunction, with or without aura [ 1 ]. Approximately 16%–18% of women and 6%–8% of men in the USA suffer from migraine during the most productive years of their professional lives [ 2 – 4 ]. Although enhanced excitatory neurotransmitters such as glutamate (Glu), which facilitate spontaneous cortical spreading depression (CSD), are valued as central mechanism of triggering migraine, the pathophysiology of migraine is attributed to multiple factors, and many of these aspects are still not unraveled [ 5 , 6 ].…”