Neuropathic pain and headache

Abstract

Neuropathic pain (NP) of head or face commonly consists of trigeminal neuralgia, glossopharyngeal neuralgia, occipital neuralgia, and postherpetic neuralgia, which is often reported as having lancinating, burning or lightning pain and is often associated with the appearance of abnormal sensory signs such as spontaneous pain, allodynia or hyperalgesia. Migraine is a common primary headache, characterized by usually throbbing pain, often unilateral in distribution and often associated with nausea, vomiting, photophobia, phonophobia, osmophobia and aggravation after physical activities. Chronic daily headache (CDH) is defined as a primary headache which occurs at least 15 d per month and more than 3 months, including chronic migraine, chronic tension-type headache, and new daily persistent headache, et al. The pathogenesis of these two types of headache can be explained partially by "central sensitization", which is also important to the pathogenesis of neuropathic pain mechanisms.