Migraine Prophylaxis with Salmon Calcitonin: a Cross‐over Double‐blind, Placebo‐controlled Study

Abstract

SYNOPSIS Ten women with histories of migraine attacks and with diagnosis of classic or common migraineconcluded a double‐blind, placebo controlled, cross‐over study to assess the effectiveness of syntheticsalmon calcitonin 100 MRC U. i.m. a day in preventing migraine attacks. After a two‐month run‐in phase thewomen were randomly allocated to one of the following two‐month sequences: placebo‐calcitonin orcalcitonin‐placebo. The patients filled in every day a standard card with number, duration and severity ofattacks. The mean migraine frequency per month on calcitonin was 3.7±0.7 (s.e.m.) and on placebo 7.7±1.3(r<0.01). The ratio of total score of headache intensity to the number of days of observation on calcitoninwas 0.18±0.03 and on placebo was 0.30±0.04 (r<0.01). It is concluded that calcitonin is effective forprophylactic treatment of migraine and should be useful when other first‐choice treatments arecontraindicated.

Calcitonin in Osteoporosis

“…In fact, several short-term, mostly uncontrolled studies have reported analgesic properties of calcitonin in extraskeletal painful conditions of different nature. For example, parenteral salmon calcitonin was significantly more effective than placebo in reducing the frequency of pain episodes in migraine [147,148]. Likewise, calcitonin was able to reduce the pain score in patients with the phantom limb pain syndrome in the early postoperative period [149,150] and in mild cases of lumbar spinal stenosis [146].…”

The Analgesic Role of Calcitonin Following Osteoporotic Fracture

“…Firstly, SCT has been shown to provide pain relief in a wide variety of conditions, not only those in which an antiresorptive effect may be the mechanism, such as Paget's disease [71][72][73][74], rheumatoid arthritis [75,76] and metastatic cancer [77][78][79][80][81][82], but also in other conditions, for example, reflex sympathetic dystrophy [83,84], phantom pain [85] and migraine [86,87]. Secondly, significant analgesia occurs within days of initiating SCT treatment, well before the maximum effect on bone markers is reached at 8 weeks [88].…”

“…However, the mechanism(s) by which SCT induces pain relief has not been conclusively shown. There is clinical evidence both supporting [82,[90][91][92][93] and refuting [86,[94][95][96] the appearance of raised serum b-endorphin levels following administration of SCT. However, no clinical study has investigated whether the pain relief elicited by SCT is reversed by naloxone.…”

Hormones in pain modulation and their clinical implications for pain control: a critical review

“…In humans, it exerts a minor effect on calcium balance. 67 CT was used, and abused, as an analgesic treatment of painful conditions such as osteoporosis, 68 phantom limb pain, 69 diabetic neuropathy, 70 complex regional pain syndrome, 71 migraine, 72 and malignancies. 73 According to studies in different fields, CT has multisystem binding sites including plasma membranes, bone, cultured human lymphocytes, malignant cells, and CNS neurons.…”