Few effective options are available for the acute treatment of migraine. Goadsby et al. provided handheld, portable stimulation devices to 30 people who regularly experienced migraines, and taught them to self-administer transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation when pain became severe. In a 6-week open-label trial, no major or unanticipated adverse effects were reported, and vagus nerve stimulation completely eliminated pain in 22% of attacks rated moderate to severe.
References
Goadsby, P. J. et al. Effect of noninvasive vagus nerve stimulation on acute migraine: an open-label pilot study. Cephalalgia 10.1177/0333102414524494
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Noninvasive vagus nerve stimulation to relieve migraine. Nat Rev Neurol 10, 181 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrneurol.2014.53
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrneurol.2014.53