NCT02748577

Pain Processing in Adults With Migraines

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 121 (actual)
• Sponsor: Wake Forest University Health Sciences · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

Primary Objective of this study: To assess experimental heat pain responses (pain intensity, pain unpleasantness, pain catastrophizing, emotional reactivity) in migraineurs vs. healthy controls. The current tools of migraine pain measurement are inadequate to distinguish the overall burden of suffering, as there is an over reliance on a single numerical pain score to represent the entire pain experience. Measuring and targeting the affective component, in addition to the sensory component of pain, may capture this discrepancy in disease burden. The affective component of migraine pain may be just as important as the sensory component to target and measure since it significantly impacts outcomes, disability, and has therapeutic treatment implications. Quantitative sensory testing (QST) is a robust lab paradigm (not a clinical experience) that delivers one painful noxious thermal stimuli and asks for simultaneous pain intensity and pain unpleasantness scores. By using this in the research, investigators will be able to differentiate the sensory (pain quality-what the pain feels like) from the affective (how awful/unpleasant the pain feels) components of experimental pain in normal controls vs. migrainuers. No previous studies have evaluated differences in experimental pain intensity vs. pain unpleasantness in migraineurs vs. controls. As migraine pain uniquely involves many altered sensory phenomenon (e.g., photophobia, phonophobia), it cannot be assumed that responses to experimental pain in migraine will be the same as other clinical pain syndromes. Further, different clinical pain syndromes have distinct responses to pain intensity vs. pain unpleasantness.

Detailed description

Investigators will conduct a cross-sectional study in migraineurs (interictally, i.e., between migraine attacks) and healthy controls to compare responses to experimental heat pain intensity and unpleasantness and correlate these results to differences in emotional reactivity and pain catastrophizing.

Conditions

• Migraines

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	Questionnaires	Before the experimental session, participants will use REDCap to complete several questionnaires used to assess outcomes.
OTHER	Quantitative Sensory Testing (QST) Pain Measurements	Investigators will administer noxious thermal stimulation to assess pain threshold temperatures and assess responses to pain on measures of pain intensity and pain unpleasantness

Timeline

• Start date: 2016-08-24
• Primary completion: 2019-07-16
• Completion: 2019-07-16
• First posted: 2016-04-22
• Last updated: 2020-05-12

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States