Assessing and managing medication overuse headache in Australian clinical practice.

More than 3 million Australians are estimated to have migraine disorders, and over a quarter of a million Australians are estimated to have medication overuse headache (MOH). The personal, societal and economic burden of MOH is high. MOH impacts an individual's ability to work or study, care for family or themselves, culminating in poor quality of life.

The Evolution of Medication Overuse Headache: History, Pathophysiology and Clinical Update.

Medication overuse headache (MOH), the development or worsening of chronic headache resulting from frequent and excessive intake of medications used for acute treatment of headache, is a common secondary headache disorder and is associated with significant personal and societal burdens. The plausible physiologic mechanism is that chronic exposure to acute care migraine treatment leads to suppression of endogenous antinociceptive systems, consequently facilitating the trigeminal nociceptive process via up-regulation of the calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) system. Recognizing and preventing its development is an integral aspect of migraine management, as medication overuse is a modifiable risk factor in the progression from episodic to chronic migraine.

Overuse of opioids for acute migraine in an Australian emergency department.

Objective: Acute migraine is associated with significant personal, economic and work-related disability. Management guidelines advise the use of simple analgesia, triptans, chlorpromazine and anti-emetics based on severity, with avoidance of opioids. We aimed to determine consistency of prescribing patterns in our ED with national guidelines.

Risk of medication overuse headache across classes of treatments for acute migraine.

Background: The most commonly prescribed medications used to treat migraine acutely are single analgesics, ergots, opioids, and triptans. Due to varying mechanisms of action across drug classes, there is reason to believe that some classes may be less likely than others to elicit Medication Overuse Headache (MOH) than others. We therefore aimed to determine whether certain classes of acute migraine drugs are more likely to elicit MOH than others.

Update on the Pharmacological Treatment of Chronic Migraine.

Chronic migraine (CM) is a common and disabling disorder that remains underdiagnosed and poorly treated. Significant unmet therapeutic needs add to the burden of this disorder; even when CM is recognized, effective treatment options are limited and randomized controlled trials supporting the use of various preventive medications are sparse. In this review, we discuss the available options for CM treatment.