Early treatment with sumatriptan prevents PACAP38-induced migraine: A randomised clinical trial

What Was Tested

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

Who Took Part

The study group was 37 patients.

PubMed indexes the participants as teenagers, adults and middle-aged adults.

A total of 37 patients with migraine without aura were enrolled between July 2018 to December 2019.

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.

As a double-blind PACAP study, the assignments were hidden from both participants and investigators until the end.

Some patients received a placebo instead of PACAP, giving a reference point.

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

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Incidence, Migraine Disorders, Migraine without Aura, Pituitary Adenylate Cyclase-Activating Polypeptide and Sumatriptan.

The authors tagged it with the keywords Blood vessels, PACAP isoforms, headache, mast cell degranulation, serotonin and triptans.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of PACAP in 37 patients in people with migraine.

With fewer than 40 people, it is a small study, so it is better read as an early signal for further research than as a settled answer.

Its findings take up roughly 6 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2021 (Cephalalgia : an international journal of headache), a journal based in England.

More context: the PACAP compound page, Migraine research.