Effect of the H(1)-antihistamine clemastine on PACAP38 induced migraine

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of PACAP in the context of migraine, published as a randomized controlled trial.

To investigate the effect of the H1-antihistamine clemastine on the migraine-inducing abilities of pituitary adenylate cyclase activating peptide-38.

The researchers recorded migraine/headache characteristics every 10 min until 90 min after the start of infusion, and collected blood to investigate mast cell degranulation and the inflammation markers tryptase and tumor necrosis factor-alpha before and after infusion of pituitary adenylate cyclase activating peptide-38.

Who Took Part

PubMed indexes the participants as young adults, adults and middle-aged adults, both men and women.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled and crossover study.

Because people in this PACAP study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

Blinding on both sides kept the participants and researchers unaware of who received PACAP.

The comparison arm used a placebo, so changes seen with PACAP could be set against what happens without it.

In the crossover set-up each of the participants took both PACAP and the comparison in turn, acting as their own control.

The researchers conducted a double-blind, randomized, placebo controlled two-way cross-over study.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Clemastine, Headache, Histamine H1 Antagonists, Migraine Disorders and Pituitary Adenylate Cyclase-Activating Polypeptide.

The authors tagged it with the keywords PAC receptor, PACAP38, antihistamine and mast cells.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of PACAP in people with migraine.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 5 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2019 (Cephalalgia : an international journal of headache), a journal based in England.

More context: the PACAP compound page, Migraine research.