Migraine Outcome Should Not Be Used to Determine Diagnosis, Severity, and Therapy: Moving Towards a Multiparametric Definition of Chronicity

Reducing the Impact of Headache and Allodynia Score in Chronic Migraine: An Exploratory Analysis from the Real-World Effectiveness of Anti-CGRP Monoclonal Antibodies Compared to Onabotulinum Toxin A (RAMO) Study

BACKGROUND

Chronic migraine (CM) is a disabling and hard-to-treat condition, associated with high disability and high cost. Among the preventive treatments, botulinum toxin A (BoNT-a) and monoclonal antibodies against the calcitonin gene-related protein (anti-CGRP mAbs) are the only disease-specific ones. The assessment of the disease burden is complex, and among others, tools such as the allodynia symptoms checklist (ASC-12) and headache impact test (HIT-6) are very useful. This exploratory study analysed the impact of these two therapies on migraine burden.

METHODS

The RAMO study was a multicentre, observational, retrospective investigation conducted in two headache centres: the Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Neurologico Carlo Besta (Milan) and the Fondazione Policlinico Campus Bio-Medico (Rome). This study involved patients with chronic migraine treated with mAbs or BoNT-A. We conducted a subgroup exploratory analysis on HIT-6 and ASC-12 scores in the two groups. The Wilcoxon rank-sum test, Fisher's exact test, and ANOVA were performed.

RESULTS

Of 126 patients, 36 on mAbs and 90 on BoNT-A had at least one available follow-up. mAbs resulted in a mean reduction of -11.1 and -11.4 points, respectively, in the HIT-6 at 6 and 12 months, while BoNT-A was reduced -3.2 and -3.6 points, respectively; the mAbs arm resulted in mean reductions in ASC-12 at 6 and 12 months of follow-up of -5.2 and -6.0 points, respectively, while BoNT-A showed lesser mean changes of -0.5 and -0.9 points, respectively. The adjusted analysis confirmed our results.

CONCLUSIONS

In this exploratory analysis, anti-CGRP mAbs showed superior effectiveness for HIT-6 and ASC12 compared to BoNT-A. Reductions in terms of month headache days (MHD), migraine disability assessment test (MIDAS), and migraine acute medications (MAM) were clinically relevant for both treatments.

Rethinking headache as a global public health case model for reaching the SDG 3 HEALTH by 2030

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development sets out, through 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a path for the prosperity of people and the planet. SDG 3 in particular aims to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages and includes several targets to enhance health. This review presents a "headache-tailored" perspective on how to achieve SDG 3 by focusing on six specific actions: targeting chronic headaches; reducing the overuse of acute pain-relieving medications; promoting the education of healthcare professionals; granting access to medication in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC); implementing training and educational opportunities for healthcare professionals in low and middle income countries; building a global alliance against headache disorders. Addressing the burden of headache disorders directly impacts on populations' health, as well as on the possibility to improve the productivity of people aged below 50, women in particular. Our analysis pointed out several elements, and included: moving forward from frequency-based parameters to define headache severity; recognizing and managing comorbid diseases and risk factors; implementing a disease management multi-modal management model that incorporates pharmacological and non-pharmacological treatments; early recognizing and managing the overuse of acute pain-relieving medications; promoting undergraduate, postgraduate, and continuing medical education of healthcare professionals with specific training on headache; and promoting a culture that favors the recognition of headaches as diseases with a neurobiological basis, where this is not yet recognized. Making headache care more sustainable is an achievable objective, which will require multi-stakeholder collaborations across all sectors of society, both health-related and not health-related. Robust investments will be needed; however, considering the high prevalence of headache disorders and the associated disability, these investments will surely improve multiple health outcomes and lift development and well-being globally.

Public View of Public Health Emergencies Based on Artificial Intelligence Data

In the current environment where the network and the real society are intertwined, the network public view of public emergencies has involved in reality and altered the ecology of communal public views in China. A new online court of influence has been created, and it affected the trend of events. As the main type of public emergencies, public health emergencies are directly related to people's health and life insurance. Therefore, the public often pays special attention. At present, correct media guidance plays an irreplaceable and important role in calming people's hearts and stabilizing social order. If news and public view are left unchecked, it is likely to cause panic among the people. However, in reality, public view research has always been a research object that is difficult to intelligentize and quantify. Based on such a realistic background, the article conducts a research on public view of public health emergencies based on artificial intelligence data analysis. This study designs an expert system for network public view and optimizes the algorithm for the key problem: SFC deployment. Finally, the system was put into real news and public opinion research on new coronavirus epidemic prevention, and experimental tests were carried out. The experimental results have shown that in the new coronavirus incident, the nuclear leakage incident, and the epidemic prevention policy, the data obtained by the public through the Internet are 50%, 68.06%, and 64.35%, respectively. For the system function in this study, both ICSO and IPSO are far better than the optimization results of CSO and PSO. For most of the test functions, IPSO is better than ICSO's optimization results, which better fulfills the needs of the research content. This study will make an in-depth analysis of the evolution process of online public opinion on public emergencies from the macro-, meso-, and micro-perspectives, in order to analyze the dissemination methods and internal evolution mechanism of various public emergencies of online public opinion, which provides countermeasures and suggestions for the government to guide and manage network public opinion.

Stigma and Chronic Pain

Stigma is defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as "a mark of shame, disgrace or disapproval that results in an individual being rejected, discriminated against and excluded from participating in a number of different areas of society". Extensive literature searches have documented stigma in the context of health. Among the physical health conditions that are associated with stigma, chronic pain deserves particular attention. Stigma experienced by individuals with chronic pain affects their entire life. Literature identifies multiple dimensions or types of stigma, including public stigma, structural stigma and internalized stigma. Recent literature supports the biopsychosocial model of pain, according to which biological, psychological and sociocultural variables interact in a dynamic manner to shape an individual's response to chronic pain. Chronic pain affects a higher proportion of women than men around the world. There is an inadequate education of health care professionals regarding pain assessment and their insecurity to manage patients with chronic pain. A first-line intervention strategy could be to promote pain education and to expand knowledge and assessment of chronic pain, as recently highlighted for headache disorders, paradigmatically for resistant or refractory migraine, whose diagnosis, without an adequate education to understand the possible fluctuations of the disease, may have profound psychological implications with the idea of insolvability and contribute to stigmatizing the patient.