The unique demands of childhood migraine

Abstract

I t was 2010, and paediatric psychologist Scott Powers was growing frustrated by the lack of research into migraine in children. Medications commonly prescribed to young people had been studied mainly in adults. As a result, paediatricians were in the dark about which treatments would be safest for their young patients, or how long children should wait for improvement on one drug before moving on to another. Powers wanted to offer evidence-based guidance, so he and his colleagues at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center in Ohio designed a trial. They would evaluate two of the most common preventive medications in children with chronic migraines and compare them against a placebo. The Childhood and Adolescent Migraine Prevention (CHAMP) trial began in 2012, Children can struggle to explain their symptoms with words, so Carl Stafstrom at Johns Hopkins Medicine asks them to draw their migraines.