Mindfulness Therapy for Chronic Migraine

Background and significance. Chronic migraine (CM) is a negative evolution of migraine characterized by frequent headache attacks (>45 days/three months) with a 1-year prevalence of 3.1%. Comorbidities, lifestyle and excessive intakes of symptomatic medications (medication overuse-MO) play a role in progression into CM; altered inflammatory state (WBC, peripheral blood lymphocyte subsets CD3, CD4, CD8, CD19) and dysfunctions in the mesocorticolimbic dopamine circuit were found in CMMO patients. To prevent CM-MO relapse, withdrawal of overused drugs and complementing pharmacological prophylaxis with behavioral treatments is indicated [5]. Withdrawal from MO and medical prophylaxis determine a 30-40% reduction in headaches frequency by 12 months, and 40-50% of patients show a reduction >=50%. Conversely, 30% of them relapse into CM-MO by 12 months: the main drivers include overuse of analgesic compared to triptans and being on medical therapy alone compared to adjuvant psychological techniques. Research demonstrated the utility of relaxation training, stress management, cognitive-behavioral therapy in migraine disorder. Parallel to this, mindfulness showed considerable promise particularly on headache-related disability, affective distress: however, to date evidence of its efficacy is limited by small trials, short follow-up periods, inadequate power and poor consideration of primary outcomes for CM research, i.e. reduction of headaches frequency. Our main hypothesis is that mindfulness might provide additional benefit, when added to medical prophylaxis alone, on both primary (i.e. an increased number of patients showing a reduction of headaches frequency >=50%) and secondary outcomes: reduction in the consumption of symptomatic medications (i.e. analgesics, triptans, opioids, ergot-derivate), reduction of disability, depression, anxiety and cutaneous allodynia, improvement in quality of life; reduction of costs, connected to both lower direct medical costs (e.g. drugs consumption and attendance to ER) and indirect costs (i.e. reduction in lost workdays and improved workplace efficiency); reduction in concentration of the markers of inflammatory pattern; reversible neuroadaptations highlighted by functional connectivity in regions of dopaminergic circuit.

The study will be a Phase III; randomized, Open-Label; Monocentric study. Patients will be enrolled to detect a 20% difference between the two groups on the primary outcome (50% or more of headache reduction by 12 months). We set alpha 0.05 and power 80%, and foresee that up to 12% of patients might be lost at follow-up: therefore, we determined that 170 patients should be randomized 1:1 to the two groups. Patients will be excluded if they: have psychiatric comorbidities of psychotic area; pregnancy; comorbidity with secondary headaches (e.g. idiopathic intracranial hypertension); were submitted to withdrawal from MO at least twice in the previous two years; attended any mindfulness-based therapy. For each medication type and research arm 20 patients will be selected: thus 80 patients will be enrolled for neuroradiological investigation. The treatment consists in six 45 minutes weekly sessions. The main focus of the six session will be the following: 1) introduction and meaning; 2) Focus on breath; 3) posture and body awareness; 4) meditation of sounds; 5) Guided imagery; 6) acceptance and awareness.

Our project is highly innovative as it will be the first time in which a new emerging treatment like Mindfulness is tested for its efficacy and cost-efficacy when added to standard pharmacological prophylaxis. If our hypothesis will be confirmed, then we will positively impact on: a) clinicians, that will have confirmation of another valid adjuvant treatment option; b) national health system, that will cut down the relevant costs of medication intake and indirect costs associated to reduced productivity; c) patients, that will enhance their ability to cope with headaches and improve their overall health, quality of life, work-ability and reduce their disability. Moreover, our study will address the possible impact of Mindfulness as an add-on to pharmacological prophylaxis not only on clinical data, such as headaches frequency and symptomatic medications intake, but also on biomarkers of inflammatory and functional neuroimaging patterns.