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Beyond Animal Research
By Jonathan Balcombe, Ph.D.
March 2005 |
Migraine Research, Part 1
According the UK-based Migraine Trust Association (www.migrainetrust.org),
migraine is the most common neurological condition in the developed
world, affecting over 15 percent of the population of the UK, where
it is more prevalent than diabetes, epilepsy and asthma combined.
The National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke reports
some 28 million Americans as having migraine. There is no cure,
but there are many available treatments.
Despite this, animals bear the brunt of scientific curiosity about
migraine. Cats, monkeys, pigs, guinea pigs, and rats are all being
used in headache research. These experimental subjects are not suffering
from migraines (at least not that we can tell), but their skulls
are opened up and their brains tweaked, probed and drugged in a
parade of experiments designed, it seems, more to advance scientific
careers than useful knowledge.
Here are some recent examples of migraine research using cats:
- The brains of seven anesthetized cats were stimulated to mimic
the pain of human headache, then the animals were dosed with a
known anti-migraine drug (topiramate) to try to understand how
it works.1
- When the brains of anesthetized cats were stimulated for two
hours, activity was observed in the hypothalamus, suggesting its
role in headache. The authors mention prior studies in which stimulating
another part of the brain has produced head pain in humans, and
surmise that the hypothalamus is also involved.2
- Arteries were exposed and/or catheterized in anesthetized cats
to study the effects of injections of the hormone serotonin on
arteries. Observed effects were concluded not to be of likely
importance to the pathophysiology of migraine.3
And here is one that used monkeys:
- Researchers attempted (unsuccessfully) to induce spreading
depression (SD, a brain activity symptom associated with migraines)
in nine macaque monkeys, by applying potassium chloride to their
brains.4
These studies illustrate how little justification may be required
for animal experiments. Not only is such research compromised
by interspecies differences in physiology and drug metabolism,
and by the inability of animals to communicate symptoms to us,
but these experiments are mostly attempts to confirm already known
aspects of the human condition.
Migraine is a uniquely human disorder, and studying it in humans
is the way to make meaningful progress towards helping sufferers.
Ethical methods abound. Brain imaging is a powerful non-invasive
tool that allows researchers to observe brain activity while symptoms
occur. A particularly fertile area of study has been prevention
research. Several studies have shown that migraines often have a
specific dietary or environmental trigger. A future column will
examine migraine research in the human clinical setting.
Jonathan Balcombe, Ph.D., is a PCRM research consultant with
background in ethology. He is the author of The Use of Animals in
Higher Education, as well as many articles on humane life science
education and scientific papers on animal behavior. He is the author
of a recent
scientific review showing that animal experiments are more stressful
than previously understood.
References
1. Storer RJ, Goadsby PJ. Topiramate inhibits trigeminovascular
neurons in the cat. Cephalalgia. 2004;24:1049-56.
2. Benjamin L, Levy MJ, Lasalandra MP, Knight YE, Akerman S, Classey
JD, Goadsby PJ. the cat: a Fos study. Neurobiol Dis. 2004;16:500-5.
3. Lambert GA, Donaldson C, Hoskin KL, Boers PM, Zagami AS. Dilatation
induced by 5-HT in the middle meningeal artery of the anaesthetised
cat. Naunyn Schmiedebergs Arch Pharmacol. 2004;369:591-601.
4. Yokota C, Kuge Y, Hasegawa Y, Tagaya M, Abumiya T, Ejima N, Tamaki
N, Yamaguchi T, Minematsu K. Unique profile of spreading depression
in a primate model. J Cereb Blood Flow Metab. 2002;22:835-42.
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