HÃ¥kan Ashina
Mapping Signaling Mechanisms in Post-Traumatic Headache: A Bedside to Bench Approach.
HÃ¥kan Ashina, Department of Neurology at Rigshospitalet Glostrup, has received a Lundbeck Foundation Early-Career Clinician Scientist grant worth DKK 1,715,000.
About the project
Post-traumatic headache is a disabling neurologic disorder, which is often attributed to traumatic brain injury and affects millions of people worldwide. The clinical presentation of post-traumatic headache is characterized by recurrent episodes of headache, which are often reported to resemble migraine attacks. Based on this clinical observation, questions have been raised that post-traumatic headache and migraine might be caused by shared pathophysiologic mechanisms. However, the neurobiologic underpinnings of post-traumatic headache are still incompletely understood.
The project will provide critical insights on the genesis of cephalic pain in post-traumatic headache using a ’bedside to bench’ approach – identifying whether meningeal nociceptors can be activated by intravenous infusion of PACAP-38 and a KATP channel opener. Animal and human experiments will be used to investigate whether upregulation of intracellular cAMP and opening of BKCa channels can induce migraine-like headache in people with post-traumatic headache. Taken together, the project has the potential to identify novel drug targets for post-traumatic headache.
