Tag Archives: headache

Short and Long-Term Effects of Cannabis For Headache and Migraine Pain Relief

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Carrie Cuttler, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Washington State University
Department of Psychology
Pullman, WA, 99164-4820

PainRelief.com:  What is the background for this study?  What are the main findings?

Response: Use of cannabis for headache and migraine is relatively common yet there have been few studies examining the effectiveness of medical cannabis for these purposes.

PainRelief.com: What should readers take away from your report?

Response: We analyzed data from nearly 20,000 cannabis use sessions tracked using the medical cannabis app Strainprint. The results show that headache and migraine severity ratings were reduced by nearly 50% from before to immediately after cannabis use. The results further revealed that men report larger reductions in headache severity following cannabis use than do women and that use of cannabis concentrates was associated with larger reductions in headache severity ratings than use of more traditional cannabis flower.

We also demonstrate that dose of cannabis used to manage these conditions increases across time and that efficacy of cannabis in reducing headache decreases across time. This indicates that there is some evidence of tolerance to the acute effects of cannabis on ameliorating headache across time. More encouragingly we found that baseline ratings of headache and migraine remained stable across time/cannabis use sessions which indicates that cannabis is not associated with the medication overuse headaches (i.e., increases in baseline headache and migraine severity across time as a function of the use of medications to treat these conditions) that more conventional treatments tend to produce.

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Migraine: Pain Relief from BotoxA May Last At Least 6 Months After Injections Stopped

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Jason Ching MD
Department of Neurology
George Washington University School of Medicine
Washington, DC

headache migraine

PainRelief.com:  What is the background for this study?  What are the main findings?

Response: The clinical course of chronic migraine patients who respond positively to serial botulinum toxin A (BotoxA) injection therapy and eventually discontinue treatment has not been well-studied. Optimizing the duration of treatment would be beneficial from both a cost and safety perspective.

In our study, we found that over 80% of our chronic migraine patients who achieved our stipulated stopping rule experienced no clinical worsening or associated need to resume prophylactic therapy for at least 6 months following discontinuation of BotoxA.

A greater number of BotoxA treatments required to achieve the stopping rule and the presence of baseline chronic daily headaches for over 6 months duration were factors correlated with clinical deterioration.

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Headache an Immense Public Health Problem, for Rich and Poor Countries

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PainRelief.com Interview with:

Lars Jacob Stovner MD PhD Professor of Neurology Department of Neuromedicine and Movement Science NTNU, Norwegian University of Science and Technology Head of the Norwegian Advisory Unit on Headaches, St. Olavs Hospital Trondheim, Norway

Prof. Stovner

Lars Jacob Stovner MD PhD
Professor of Neurology
Department of Neuromedicine and Movement Science
NTNU, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Head of the Norwegian Advisory Unit on Headaches,
St. Olavs Hospital Trondheim, Norway

PainRelief.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? 

Response: The study focuses on prevalence and burden of migraine and tension-type headache in the Global Burden of Disease project from 2016.

Previous analyses has shown that migraine is the second most disabling disorder in terms of years lived with disability. This particular analysis shows that more than 1 billion people suffered from migraine in 2016 and 1.9 billion from tension-type headache, and it gives estimates each country and different world regions.

Headache is particularly burdensome in young and middle-aged women, but the impact is also quite marked also in men, children and elderly.

There is considerable variation between countries, but the burden is relatively stable over time (from 1990), and there is no obvious relation to the socioeconomic level of the country.  Continue reading →

FDA Approved Emgality Offers New Hope For Migraine Prevention

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Gudarz Davar, M.D., Vice President
Neuroscience Platform Leader
Eli Lilly and Company

PainRelief.com: What is the background for this announcement?  How big a problem is migraine in the US?  Who is primarily affected? 

Response: Migraine is a disabling, neurologic disease that affects more than 30 million American adults. According to the Medical Expenditures Panel Survey, the total unadjusted cost associated with migraine in the U.S. is estimated to be as high as $56 billion annually. People with migraine can miss out on significant moments in their lives—birthdays and anniversaries—and there remains an unmet need for treatment options that can help patients achieve significant reductions in the overall frequency of migraine attacks.

Emgality (galcanezumab-gnlm) was approved by the FDA on Thursday, September 27, for the preventive treatment of migraine in adults. Emgality is a humanized monoclonal antibody indicated for the preventive treatment of migraine in adults that binds to CGRP ligand and blocks its binding to the receptor, which is believed to play a role in migraine. It is offered as a self-administered, once-monthly subcutaneous injection. Emgality offers new hope to people living with migraine as one of the first medicines developed specifically for the prevention of migraine.

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