Substance P theory: a unique focus on the painful and painless phenomena of cluster headache.

What It Covers

The paper reports a study of Substance P, published as a review.

These studies of cluster headache (CH) focus on two key features of pain transmission: a) sensory nerves when stimulated, as well as the expected afferent transmission, also display an efferent function which affects capillaries, glands, and smooth muscle (of the iris in CH); substance P (SP) and allied transmitters such as Vasoactive Intestinal Peptide (VIP) and Calcitonin Gene-Related Peptide (CGRP) are the main agonists of this dual afferent-efferent function; b) impaired pain transmission (deafferentation-like condition) provokes a rostral spread of neuronal irritability and automatic firing ("quasi epileptic foci") producing a clinical predilection for pain with the generation of "spontaneous" pains along the sensory pathways.

This miosis is ascribed to a retrograde release of SP, induced by electrical stimulation of the trigeminal ophthalmic branch.

Who the Included Studies Covered

PubMed tags the participants as both men and women.

What Was Measured

These studies of cluster headache (CH) focus on two key features of pain transmission: a) sensory nerves when stimulated, as well as the expected afferent transmission, also display an efferent function which affects capillaries, glands, and smooth muscle (of the iris in CH); substance P (SP) and allied transmitters such as Vasoactive Intestinal Peptide (VIP) and Calcitonin Gene-Related Peptide (CGRP) are the main agonists of this dual afferent-efferent function; b) impaired pain transmission (deafferentation-like condition) provokes a rostral spread of neuronal irritability and automatic firing ("quasi epileptic foci") producing a clinical predilection for pain with the generation of "spontaneous" pains along the sensory pathways.

The subject headings attached to it are Capsaicin, Cluster Headache, Iris, Models, Biological, Nasal Mucosa, Salivary Glands and Substance P.

What This Means in Plain Language

This is a review of Substance P.

The publication is from 1990 (Headache), a journal based in United States.

More context: the Substance P compound page, all human trials.