One out of ten Spaniards suffers from migraine, a problem which, according to the data from the Cephalea Study Group of the Spanish Society of Neurology, is more common among women ( between 13% and 17%) than among men (4 -6%). Among the severe primary headaches (i.e. those which are not caused by a determined pathology), migraine is the most common. Migraine is strongly associated with a family history of the illness and consists of recurrent attacks of severe headaches with variable intensity, frequency and duration (some people suffer from it every day), which are usually on the same side of the head and often cause sickness, vomiting and intolerance to light and noise.
This problem is at the heart of the study carried out by the «Study Group on cephalea, drugs which act on the central nervous system and fibromialgy» at the Department of Pharmacology of the Universidad de Granada, headed by Elena Pita Calandre. Their work, particularly the testing of new drugs in patients with severe headaches and fibromialgy, has revealed that a periodic infiltration of local anaesthetic, as a complement to regular pharmacological treatment, can help to alleviate the effects of this unpleasant illness.
These UGR scientists claim that among the causes of migraine there is a process of peripheral sensitivization: people who suffer from this illness have a hyperexcitability of the first neuron (the first neuron which receives the stimuli from the outside). This causes the aforementioned “trigger points”, which are those areas of the head that set off the migraine crisis when pressed, explains Dr. Pita. Pita has just published the results of her study in the ‘European Journal of Neurology’.
In the head and the neck
Although the points which cause the migraine can be located anywhere in the head, they are usually located in the temporal area (temples) and in the back of the neck. For this reason, patients often come to Pita’s surgery complaining that they suffer from headaches even when they comb their hair. The location of these “trigger points” in patients with migraine had never been studied before, although the existence of hyperalgesia in different areas of the cranium, had been already suggested.
According to the UGR researcher, whose group has studied more than a hundred patients, the treatment of the “trigger points” with peripheral infiltration of local anaesthetic improves the cephalea in patients who do not respond to preventive pharmacologic treatment. “Our aim is to find out which is the right combination of these subcutaneous injections in order to complement the regular treatment to fight migraine”, explains Elena Pita.
In a previous study carried out in collaboration with Professor María Luisa Arnedo Montoro of the Department of Experimental Psychology and Behavioural Physiology, the “Study Group on cephalea, drugs which act on the central nervous system and fibromialgy” of the Universidad de Granada demonstrated that chronic migraine causes memory disorders. In other words, the more frequent the headaches in a patient (and the more years the patient has suffered from them), the greater the likelihood that he or she will suffer from memory problems.
“There are many patients who suffer from anomia (the inability to remember the names of things) caused by cephalea», says Elena Pita. The explanation is logical: if a chronic migraine can cause epileptic crises and even brain infarctions, it is hardly surprising that it can cause cognitive disorders.
Reference
Prof. Elena Pita Calandre. Department of Pharmacology of the Universidad de Granada.
Phone numbers: 958246297 – 958243538. E-mail address: epita@ugr.es