(Press-News.org) MINNEAPOLIS – Wearing a nerve stimulator for 20 minutes a day may be a new option for migraine sufferers, according to new research published in the February 6, 2013, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
The stimulator is placed on the forehead, and it delivers electrical stimulation to the supraorbital nerve.
For the study, 67 people who had an average of four migraine attacks per month were followed for one month with no treatment. Then they received either the stimulation 20 minutes a day for three months or sham stimulation, where they wore the device but the stimulation given was at levels too low to have any effect.
Those who received the stimulation had fewer days with migraine in the third month of treatment compared to the first month with no treatment. The number of days with migraine decreased from 6.9 days to 4.8 days per month. The number did not change for those who received the sham treatment.
The study also looked at the number of people who had 50 percent or higher reduction in the number of days with migraine in a month. That number was 38 percent for those who had the stimulation compared to 12 percent of those who received the sham treatment.
There were no side effects from the stimulation.
"These results are exciting, because the results were similar to those of drugs that are used to prevent migraine, but often those drugs have many side effects for people, and frequently the side effects are bad enough that people decide to quit taking the drug," said study author Jean Schoenen, MD, PhD, of Liège University in Belgium and a member of the American Academy of Neurology.
###The study was supported by the Walloon Region, Department of Economy, Employment and Research in Belgium.
To learn more about migraine, visit http://www.aan.com/patients.
The American Academy of Neurology, an association of more than 25,000 neurologists and neuroscience professionals, is dedicated to promoting the highest quality patient-centered neurologic care. A neurologist is a doctor with specialized training in diagnosing, treating and managing disorders of the brain and nervous system such as Alzheimer's disease, stroke, migraine, multiple sclerosis, brain injury, Parkinson's disease and epilepsy.
For more information about the American Academy of Neurology, visit http://www.aan.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and YouTube.
Can nerve stimulation help prevent migraine?
2013-02-07
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
'Listening to your heart' could improve body image, says study
2013-02-07
Women who are more aware of their bodies from within are less likely to think of their bodies principally as objects, according to research published February 6 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Vivien Ainley and Manos Tsakiris from the Department of Psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London.
The authors asked healthy female student volunteers aged between 19 – 26 to concentrate and count their own heartbeats, simply by "listening" to their bodies. Their accuracy in this heartbeat perception test was compared with their degree of self-objectification, based ...
Despite reported dislike, older readers put in less effort when using e-readers
2013-02-07
Reading text on digital devices like tablet computers requires less effort from older adults than reading on paper, according to research published February 6 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Matthias Schlesewsky and colleagues from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany, in collaboration with colleagues from Georg August University Göttingen and the University of Marburg, Germany.
In the past, surveys have shown that people prefer to read paper books rather than on e-readers or tablet computers. Here, the authors evaluated the origins of this preference in ...
Features of southeast European human ancestors influenced by lack of episodic glaciations
2013-02-07
A fragment of human lower jaw recovered from a Serbian cave is the oldest human ancestor found in this part of Europe, who probably evolved under different conditions than populations that inhabited more western parts of the continent at the same time, according to research published February 6 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by William Jack Rink of McMaster University, Canada, and the international team under the direction of Dušan Mihailović, University of Belgrade, Serbia, and Mirjana Roksandic, University of Winnipeg, Canada.
The fossil was found to be ...
Antibiotic cream has high cure rate, few side effects in treating cutaneous leishmaniasis
2013-02-07
Fort Detrick, Md. – An international collaboration of researchers from the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command (USAMRMC), Tunisia and France has demonstrated a high cure rate and remarkably few side effects in treating patients with cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) with an investigational antibiotic cream. CL is a parasitic disease that causes disfiguring lesions, with 350 million people at risk worldwide and 1.5 million new cases annually, including U.S. military personnel serving abroad and the socio-economically disadvantaged in the developing world, especially ...
Lungs of the planet reveal their true sensitivity to global warming
2013-02-07
Tropical rainforests are often called the "lungs of the planet" because they generally draw in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen. But the amount of carbon dioxide that rainforests absorb, or produce, varies hugely with year-to-year variations in the climate. In a paper published online this week (Feb 6 2013) by the journal Nature, a team of climate scientists from the University of Exeter, the Met Office-Hadley Centre and the NERC Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, has shown that these variations reveal how vulnerable the rainforest is to climate change.
Lead author ...
Research shows 'listening to your heart' could improve body image
2013-02-07
Researchers from the Department of Psychology at Royal Holloway university asked healthy female student volunteers aged between 19 – 26, to concentrate hard and count their own heartbeats, simply by "listening" to their bodies. Their accuracy in this heartbeat perception test was compared with their perception of their bodies as objects, measured by scores on the Self-Objectification Questionnaire.
According to the results, the more accurate the women were in detecting their heartbeats, the less they tended to think of their bodies as objects. These findings have important ...
Drop in alcohol-related deaths by nearly a third follows minimum alcohol price increase of 10 percent
2013-02-07
A new study made available online today in 'Addiction' shows that, between 2002 and 2009, the percentage of deaths caused by alcohol in British Columbia, Canada dropped more than expected when minimum alcohol price was increased, while alcohol-related deaths increased when more private alcohol stores were opened. The paper has significant implications for international alcohol policy.
The study was carried out by researchers from British Columbia, the westernmost province in Canada, using three categories of death associated with alcohol – wholly alcohol attributable ...
Biodiversity helps protect nature against human impacts: Study
2013-02-07
"You don't know what you've got 'til it's collapsed." That's how University of Guelph integrative biologists might recast a line from an iconic folk tune for their new research paper warning about the perils of ecosystem breakdown.
Their research, published today as the cover story in Nature, suggests farmers and resource managers should not rely on seemingly stable but vulnerable single-crop monocultures. Instead they should encourage more kinds of plants in fields and woods as a buffer against sudden ecosystem disturbance.
Based on a 10-year study, their paper also ...
Genetic variation doubles risk of aortic valve calcification
2013-02-07
Researchers have found a genetic variant that doubles the likelihood that people will have calcium deposits on their aortic valve. Such calcification, if it becomes severe, can cause narrowing or a blockage of the aortic valve, a condition called aortic stenosis. The study is the first large-scale, genome-wide association study to uncover a genetic link to aortic valve calcification. An article detailing the findings is published in the February 7, 2013 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
The study's lead investigators — from Johns Hopkins, Harvard University, ...
Scientists discover how chromosomes keep their loose ends loose
2013-02-07
LA JOLLA, CA – February 6, 2013 – We take it for granted that our chromosomes won't stick together, yet this kind of cellular disaster would happen constantly were it not for a protein called TRF2. Now, scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have discovered key details of how TRF2 performs this crucial chromosome-protecting function. The finding represents a significant advance in cell biology and also has implications for our understanding of cancer and the aging process.
"Cells tend to interpret their chromosome ends as sites of DNA damage, and without ...