Pharmacological aspects of experimental headache models in relation to acute antimigraine therapy

The last decade has witnessed a tremendous progress in the acute therapy of migraine, with sumatriptan, belonging to a new class of drugs, now known a s 5-HT1B/1D/1F receptor agonists, leading the way. The undoubted success of sumatriptan stimulated the development of new triptans as well as other su itable pharmacological tools and experimental models to probe into complex migraine mechanisms. In this review, we discuss the main experimental model s for migraine, against the background of the disease pathophysiology and 5 -HT receptors considered most important for migraine therapy. We believe th at the use of these migraine models will provide even better treatment for migraine patients in the next millennium. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. Al l rights reserved.