An international team of researchers from New York University recently discovered how pain is signalled from within Schwann cells and found several ways to block this signalling, providing potential targets for new migraine treatments.

The findings of the research were published in the journal, ‘Nature Communications’.

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Schwann cells, which are abundant in the peripheral nervous system and create a protective sheath around nerve fibres, play an essential role in migraine pain.

Migraines affect more than 15 percent of adults, with women twice as likely as men to experience these intense headaches. Calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP), a small protein in the nervous system, is known to play an important role in migraine pain; in fact, a new class of drugs to prevent migraines use injections of monoclonal antibodies to target CGRP or its receptor.

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“While CGRP has been implicated in migraine pain, how it causes pain has been an area of controversy in the scientific community,” said Nigel Bunnett,  professor and chair of the Department of Molecular Pathobiology at NYU College of Dentistry. Bunnett led the study with Pierangelo Geppetti,  professor of clinical pharmacology at the University of Florence and director of the Headache Center of Careggi University Hospital.