Treatment of Allodynia by Occipital Nerve Stimulation in Chronic Migraine Rodent.

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Occipital nerve stimulation (ONS) is a therapy that benefits one-third of medically refractory chronic migraine (CM) patients. How ONS affects sensory thresholds and whether modulation of thresholds could predict which patients respond to the therapy remains unclear. OBJECTIVE: To examine the effects of ONS on mechanical and thermal thresholds in a rodent CM model to better elucidate its mechanism of action. METHODS: Male Sprague-Dawley rats were implanted bilaterally with electrodes to produce ONS. The CM cohort was infused with inflammatory media epidurally based on a validated model, whereas shams were not. Thresholds were evaluated with von Frey filaments and hot plate and thermode tests. RESULTS: No baseline differences in sensory thresholds were found between the sham (n = 16) and CM (n = 16) groups. After headache induction, CM animals demonstrated mechanical allodynia in the occiput, periorbital region, forepaws, and hind paws (P < .05). In CM animals, ONS increased mechanical thresholds in all regions (P < .001), whereas in shams, it did not. ONS did not affect thermal thresholds in either group. CONCLUSION: We show that ONS improves mechanical thresholds in a rodent CM model, but not in shams. Our finding that mechanical but not thermal thresholds are altered with ONS suggests a more significant modulation of A-&#x3b1;/&#x3b2; fibers than of C fibers. Assessing the ability of ONS to reduce mechanical thresholds during a trial period could potentially be used to predict which patients respond.